A monopolist uses prices as an instrument to influence consumers' belief about the unknown quality of its product. Consumers observe prices and sales in earlier periods to learn about the product. Every period they decide whether to consume the product or to wait for a lower price in future. We...

We explore customer choice behavior when they face a choice between service providers of unknown service value. Customers arrive according to a Poisson process to the market. Service times are exponentially distributed with the same rate at each service provider. Both the service providers are...

Mere observation of others' choices can be informative about product quality. This paper develops an individual-level dynamic model of observational learning, and applies it to a novel data set from the U.S. kidney market where transplant candidates on a waiting list sequentially decide whether...

This Essay challenges the prevailing hostility towards data mining and direct marketing. The Essay starts by defining data mining and shows that the only important step is how data is used, not its aggregation or sorting. The Essay then discusses one particular type of data use, the sending of...

We study price discrimination by a monopoly two-sided platform who mediates interactions between two different groups of agents. We adapt a canonical model of second degree price discrimination a la Mussa and Rosen (1978) to a two-sided platform by focusing on non-responsiveness, a clash between...

We develop a theoretical framework to study illicit drugs markets and we estimate it using data on purchases of crack cocaine. Buyers are searching for high-quality drugs, but they determine drugs' quality (i.e., their purity) only after consuming them. Hence, sellers can rip off first-time...

Time is a crucial determinant of deception, since some misreporting opportunities come as a surprise and require an intuitive decision while others allow for extensive reflection time. To be able to pursue a deceptive strategy, however, a subject must be aware of the misreporting opportunity....

This paper studies the enforcement of fines. We randomly assign 80,000 speeding tickets to treatments that increase the salience of the payment deadline, late penalties, or both. Stressing the penalties significantly and persistently increases payment rates. Emphasizing only the deadline is not...

Time is a crucial determinant of deception, since some misreporting opportunities come as a surprise and require an intuitive decision while others allow for extensive reflection time. To be able to pursue a deceptive strategy, however, a subject must be aware of the misreporting opportunity....

Do firearm purchase delay laws reduce aggregate homicide levels? Using quasi-experimental evidence from a 6-month countrywide gun demand shock starting in late 2012, we show that U.S. states with legislation preventing immediate handgun purchases experienced smaller increases in handgun sales....