A group of individuals, with a potential conflict of interest, face a choice among alternatives. There is a network externality such that the chosen alternative yields value only if sufficiently many individuals get on board. Their preferences for each alternative and the benefit derived from a...

Field studies of networks have uncovered a preference to befriend people we perceive as similar according to some dimensions of our identity (“homophily”). Lab studies of network formation games have found that adherence to social norms of reciprocity and inequity aversion are also drivers...

Despite recent advances in reputation technologies, it is not clear how reputation systems can affect human cooperation in social networks. Although it is known that two of the major mechanisms in the evolution of cooperation are spatial selection and reputation-based reciprocity, theoretical...

People consume not only physical goods but also social interaction, and consumer choices depend on both intrinsic motivations (preferences for consumption) and extrinsic motivations (how choices impact social interactions). In this paper, we study how social identity, preference, and utility...

Platforms like telecommunication networks sell participation into groups, with group quality being determined by group composition. A monopolist may price-discriminate by offering several mutually exclusive groups of different qualities and prices, but such behavior seems absent from platform...

We propose a parsimonious model of bilateral trade under asymmetric information to shed light on the prevalence of intermediation chains that stand between buyers and sellers in many decentralized markets. Our model features a classic problem in economics where an agent uses his market power to...

We analyze an entry game with multiple periods. In each period privately informed agents who have not yet joined decide whether to subscribe to a network. Subscribers derive benefits in future periods depending on the network size. We study the case where agents are sufficiently patient and show...

Network externality is a prominent feature of increasingly many products: the marginal payoff of one's consumption increases as his neighbors consume more. In- formation of network structure is important to the seller, but is often privately known to the buyers. We model a monopoly's optimal...

We develop a game-theoretic model to study the subscription choices of subscribers with diverse ideological perspectives between two opposing news media (intermediaries) who are motivated to influence the public opinion through their roles of news verification and selective disclosure. The...

This paper introduces excluding outlier voters (EOV) as a general mechanism for revealing true preferences in social choices, and for discouraging voters from strategic voting and manipula-tion. This mechanism is general in that it can be implemented with any voting system. The paper...