The fear of contracting a serious illness caused by a contagious disease limits economic activity even after reopening. Widespread testing alone will not alleviate this problem. We argue that targeted testing in concert with targeted transfers is essential. We propose a model with these features...

We consider a dynamic auction problem motivated by the traditional single-leg, multi-period revenue management problem. A seller with C units to sell faces potential buyers with unit demand who arrive and depart over the course of T time periods. The time at which a buyer arrives, her value for...

We study a sequential social learning model where agents privately acquire information by costly search. Search costs of agents are private to them, and are independently and identically distributed. We show that asymptotic learning occurs if and only if search costs are not bounded away from...

We consider the optimal taxation of a good which exhibits a negative externality, in a setting where agents differ in their value for the good, their disutility for the externality and their value for money, and the planner observes neither. Pigouvian taxation is the unique Pareto efficient...

We consider a strategic online social network that controls information flows between agents in a social learning setting. Agents on the network select among products of competing firms of unknown quality. The network sells advertising to firms. We consider display advertising, which is standard...

Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study a novel dynamic mechanism design problem without transfers. A principal who wishes to hire only high-quality forecasters is faced with an agent of unknown quality. The agent privately observes...

In online social networks, social information, i.e., content generated and shared by users (e.g., past purchases), can be a substitute for sponsored advertising, which constitutes the network's main source of revenue. When will social information be let to spread freely over the platform? We...

In online social networks, social information, i.e., content generated and shared by users (e.g., past purchases), can be a substitute for sponsored advertising, which constitutes the network’s main source of revenue. When will social information be let to spread freely over the platform? We...