I study reputation models in which information about the long-run player's past behavior is dispersed among short-run players. I identify two challenges to reputation building when such information is aggregated via the short-run players' actions. First, when the long-run player's action can...

This paper explores how a seller should transmit product information to bidders with horizontally differentiated preferences. Under cheap-talk, we show that, in an informative equilibrium, the seller provides less precise information for more popular product attributes. Second, for any given...

We study the design of profit-maximizing mechanisms in environments with interdependent values. A single unit of a good is for sale. There is a known joint distribution of the bidders' ex post values for the good. Two programs are considered:(i) Maximize over mechanisms the minimum over...

We study experimentally the effectiveness of communication in common value committees exhibiting publicly known heterogeneous biases. We test models assuming respectively self-interested and strategic-, joint payoff-maximizing- and cognitively heterogeneous agents. These predict varying degrees...

We study the interaction between a potential offender's (principal ) incentive to commit crimes and the potential victims' (agents) incentive to report crime. The probability of crime and the credibility of reports are endogenously determined in equilibrium, and the principal is convicted if...

We analyze communication about the social returns to investment in a public good. We model two agents who have private information about these returns as well as their own taste for cooperation, or social preferences. Before deciding to contribute or not, each agent submits an unverifiable...

We develop a dynamic framework of strategic information transmission through cheap talk in a social network. Privately informed agents have different preferences about the action to be implemented by each agent and repeatedly communicate with their neighbors in the network. We first characterize...