Sellers benefit on average from revealing information about their goods to buyers, but the incentive to exaggerate undermines the credibility of seller statements. When multiple goods are being auctioned, we show that ordinal cheap talk, which reveals a complete or partial ordering of the...

Sellers benefit on average from revealing information about their goods to buyers, but the incentive to exaggerate undermines the credibility of seller statements. When multiple goods are being auctioned, we show that ordinal cheap talk, which reveals a complete or partial ordering of the...

Should an informed seller of multiple goods sell the best goods first to make a favorable impression on buyers, or instead hold back on the best goods until buyers have learned more from earlier sales? To help answer this question we consider the sequential auction of two goods by a seller with...

Can comparative statements be credible even when absolute statements are not? For instance, can a professor credibly rank different students for a prospective employer even if she has an incentive to exaggerate the merits of each student? Or can an analyst credibly rank different stocks even if...

Can comparative statements be credible even when absolute statements are not? For instance, can a professor credibly rank different students for a prospective employer even if she has an incentive to exaggerate the merits of each student? Or can an analyst credibly rank different stocks even if...

We find that bargaining over multiple issues as a bundle allows for credible cheap talk on the relative importance of the issues even when interests are directly opposed on each issue. This communication increases the chance of agreement by allowing the offerer to concede more on the issue of...

School entrance examinations are both an incentive system to motivate students and a screening device to identify students with the most potential. To maximize incentives to acquire knowledge, exams should only reward achievement. But to identify the most able students, exams should also reward...

The idea that profit sharing increases employment has been widely tested, but the theoretical basis for the claim is weak and the empirical results are ambiguous. This paper shows that employee stock ownership based on individually-held stakes avoids the problems of traditional profit sharing....

In signaling environments ranging from consumption to education, high quality senders often shun the standard signals that should separate them from lower quality senders. We find that allowing for additional, noisy information on sender quality permits equilibria where medium types signal to...

People are sometimes risk-averse in gains but risk-loving in losses. Such behavior and other anomalies underlying prospect theory arise from a model of local status maximization in which consumers compare their wealth with other consumers of similar wealth. This social explanation shares key...