We conduct experiments with human subjects in a model with a positive production externality in which productivity is a non-decreasing function of the average level of employment of other firms. The model has three steady states: the low and high steady states are expectationally stable...

We develop a tractable model of Bitcoin adoption with network effects and social learning, which we then connect to unique data from the Bank of Canada's Bitcoin Omnibus Survey for the years 2017 and 2018. The model determines how the probability of Bitcoin adoption depends on (1) network...

Can crowdfunding benefit entrepreneurs beyond providing finance? This paper shows that crowdfunding extends early feedback to entrepreneurs about the market demand for their projects, thereby mitigating uncertainty associated with entry. Using Kickstarter data and exploiting a weather-based...

We examine an analyst with career concerns making cheap talk recommendations to a sequence of traders, each of whom possesses private information concerning the analyst's ability. The recommendations of the analyst influence asset prices that are then used to evaluate the analyst. An endogeneity...

There is a long-standing debate on whether sell-side analysts learn from their experience to improve earnings forecast skills. This study shows that incentive is an important factor for understanding the "learning by doing" effect by analysts. We examine analysts' response to a complex type of...

This paper focuses on econometric issues, especially the common assumption that monetary payoff is subjects' actual utility, in estimating subjects' learning behaviors using experimental data. I propose a generalized adaptive learning model that nests commonly used learning rules. First, I show...

The aim of this manuscript is to provide the mathematical and statistical foundations of actuarial learning. This is key to most actuarial tasks like insurance pricing, product development, claims reserving and risk management. The basic approach to these tasks is regression modeling. This...

Because uncertainty is high in bad times, investors find it harder to assess firm prospects and, hence, should value analyst output more. However, higher uncertainty makes analysts' tasks harder so it is unclear if analyst output is more valuable in bad times. We find that, in bad times, analyst...

Entrepreneurs undertake more R&D when financiers are better informed about their projects because they expect to receive more funding should those projects prove successful.Financiers learn more about projects when entrepreneurs perform more R&D because then the opportunity cost of misinvesting...

We empirically analyze the nature of returns to scale in active mutual fund management. We find strong evidence of decreasing returns at the industry level: As the size of the active mutual fund industry increases, a fund's ability to outperform passive benchmarks declines. At the fund level,...