We develop a theory that explains how and when privacy can increase welfare. Without privacy, some individuals misrepresent their preferences, because they will otherwise be statistically discriminated against. This "chilling effect" hurts them individually, and impairs information aggregation....

We test if firms statistically discriminate workers based on race when em- ployer learning is asymmetric. Using data from the NLSY79, we find evidence of asymmetric employer learning. In addition, employers statistically discrimi- nate against non-college educated black workers at time of...

This paper presents several related economic models that explore the relationships between imperfect information, racial income disparities, and segregation. The use of race as a signal arises here, as in models of statistical discrimination, from imperfect information about the return to...

Most studies of gender discrimination consider how male versus female candidates are assessed given otherwise identical information about them. But, in many settings of interest, evaluators have a choice about how much information to acquire about a candidate before making a final assessment. We...

We investigate the connection between corporate governance system configurations and the role of intermediaries in the respective systems from a informational perspective. Building on the economics of information we show that it is meaningful to distinguish between internalisation and...

Das verbraucherpolitische Instrument Verbraucherberatung soll die asymmetrische Informationsverteilung zwischen Verbrauchern und Unternehmen abbauen und Vertrauen in Märkte schaffen. Bei dieser Aufgabenstellung wird vernachlässigt, dass Verbraucherberatung selbst durch die asymmetrische...

Consumer advice should reduce asymmetric information between consumer and supplier as well as provide confidence in markets. However, consumer advice itself is characterised by asymmetric information between adviser and consumer. The article figures out this aspect and shows how consumers cope...

We consider a market-for-lemons model where the seller is a price setter, and, in addition to observing the price, the buyer receives a private noisy signal of the product's quality, such as when a prospective buyer looks at a car or house for sale, or when an employer interviews a job...

Short-lived agents want to predict a random variable theta and have to decide how much effort to devote to collect private information and consequently how much to rely on public information. The latter is just a noisy average of past predictions. It is shown that costly information acquisition...

We consider multiple-principal multiple-agent games of incomplete information. In this context, we identify a class of direct and incentive compatible mechanisms: each principal privately recommends to each agent to reveal her private information to the other principals, and each agent behaves...