We study a winner-take-all R&D race between two firms that are privately informed about the arrival rate of an invention. Over time, each firm only observes whether the opponent left the race or not. The equilibrium displays a strong herding effect, that we call a 'survivor's curse.' Unlike in...

This paper studies the problem of a monopolist privately informed about its product quality, who can sell its product in advance, and faces forward-looking buyers who learn about the quality over time. We show that if the monopolist prefers to sell sooner than later, the unique equilibrium...

This paper describes equilibrium in games where the informed players may be overconfident. Motivated by specific moral-hazard, signalling and screening problems, we first assume that the "uninformed" players know that the "informed" players may be mistaken, but that the "informed" players are...

Existant studies of confl ict, negotiation and international relations do not take into account that the institutions used to resolve disputes shape the incentives for entering disputes in the first place. Because engagement in a costly and destructive war is the `punishment' for entering a...

This paper applies mechanism design to the study of international con flict resolution. Standard mechanisms in which an arbitrator can enforce her decisions are usually not feasible because disputants are sovereign entities. Nevertheless, we find that this limitation is inconsequential. Despite...

We study a model of multi-player communication. Privately informed decision makers have different preferences about the actions they take, and communicate to influence each othersʼ actions in their favor. We prove that the equilibrium capability of any player to send a truthful message to a set...

We introduce a tractable model of cheap talk among players located on networks. In our model, a player can send a message to another player if and only if he is linked to him. We derive a sharp equilibrium and welfare characterization which reveals two basic insights. In equilibrium, the...

We study elections in which two candidates poll voters about their preferred policies before taking policy positions. In the essentially unique equilibrium, candidates who receive moderate signals adopt more extreme platforms than their information suggests, but candidates with more extreme...