The psychology literature provides ample evidence that people have difficulties taking the perspective of less-informed others. This paper presents a controlled experiment showing that this "curse of knowledge" can cause comparative overconfidence and overentry into competition. In a broader...

Theoretical models of information asymmetry have identified a trade-off between the desire to learn and the desire to prevent an opponent from learning private information. This paper reports a laboratory experiment that investigates if actual bidders account for this trade-off, using a...

Agents undertaking economic decisions are exposed to an ever-increasing amount of information sources. This paper investigates how the number of available information sources impacts agents' ability to (i) select reliable sources and (ii) use their content effectively to update their beliefs. To...

Beliefs are a central determinant of behavior. Recent models assume that beliefs about or the anticipation of future consumption have direct utilityconsequences. This gives rise to informational preferences, i.e., preferences over the timing and structure of information. Using a novel and...

Beliefs are a central determinant of behavior. Recent models assume that beliefs about or the anticipation of future consumption have direct utility-consequences. This gives rise to informational preferences, i.e., preferences over the timing and structure of information. Using a novel and...

This paper studies Bayesian efficient mechanism design in environments where agents' utility depend on the chosen alternative even if they do not participate. A VCG mechanism maximizes the expected revenue of the planner among efficient mechanisms that induce the truthful participation of all...

We consider a general mechanism design setting where each agent can acquire covert information before participating in the mechanism. The central question is whether a mechanism exists which provides the efficient incentives for information acquisition ex-ante and implements the efficient...

A seller wishes to sell an object to one of multiple bidders. The valuations of the bidders are privately known. We consider the joint design problem in which the seller can decide the accuracy by which bidders learn their valuation and to whom to sell at what price. We establish that optimal...