In competition for access, interest groups provide contributions to a politician and those that provide the highest contributions win access. Groups with access present information that may influence the politician's beliefs about the socially optimal policy. Because equilibrium contributions...

Using data on junior golf tournaments, we find evidence that the “hot hand” does exist, and that its prevalence decreases as golfers gain experience. This provides an explanation as to why studies that consider professional athletes conclude that the hot hand does not exist. We also show...

A bidder may increase his bid over the course of an auction when (1) he becomes more certain about his private valuation over time (as he has more time to consider using the item), and (2) there is a positive probability he is unable to return to the auction to submit a bid in a later period.

A bidder may increase his bid over the course of an auction when (1) he becomes more certain about his private valuation over time (as he has more time to consider using the item), and (2) there is a positive probability he is unable to return to the auction to submit a bid in a later period.

There is substantial evidence that political contributions buy access to politicians. This paper incorporates access into a model of informational lobbying, then uses the access framework to analyze the impact of contribution limits on policy outcomes and representative citizen welfare. In the...

We develop a stylized game theoretic model of litigant behavior to study the effects of increased pleading standards on incentives to engage in illegal activity. Such a model is necessary to build intuition about the potential costs associated with the procedures set forth by the U.S. Supreme...

We develop a model of lobbying in which a time and resource constrained policymaker first chooses which policy proposals to learn about, before choosing which to implement. The policymaker reviews the proposals of the interest groups who provide the highest contributions. We study how policy...

We consider a game in which schools compete to place graduates in two distinct ways: by investing in the quality of education, and by strategically designing grading policies. In equilibrium, schools issue grades that do not perfectly reveal graduate abilities. This leads evaluators to have...

We model major criminal activity as a game in which a law enforcement officer chooses the rate at which to screen different population groups, and a criminal organization (e.g. drug cartel, terrorist cell) chooses the observable characteristics of its recruits. Our model best describes smuggling...