What happens when employers would like to screen their employees but only observe a subset of output? We specify a model in which heterogeneous employees respond by producing more of the observed output at the expense of the unobserved output. Though this substitution distorts output in the...

This article explores subjects in optimal income taxation characterized by recent research interest, practical importance in light of concerns about inequality, potential for misunderstanding, and prospects for advancement. Throughout, the analysis highlights paths for further investigation....

A parsimonious model of shifting policy regimes can simultaneously capture expected and actual US inflation during 1969-2005. Our model features a forward-looking New Keynesian Phillips curve and purposeful policymakers that can or cannot commit. Private sector learning about policymaker type...

We study the macroeconomic implications of asymmetric information in capital markets. We build a quantitative capital-accumulation model in which capital is traded in illiquid markets, with sellers having more information about capital quality than buyers. Asymmetric information distorts the...

I study how policymakers can access and act on the information about climate change damages that is dispersed throughout the economy. I analyze a new dynamic deposit-refund instrument (called "carbon shares") that I show can: i) efficiently price emissions conditional on information, ii)...

We analyze how information disclosure policy affects investment efficiency in non-cooperative settings with information externalities. In a two-firm, two-period model, we characterize equilibrium behavior under policies which disclose whether investment returns exceed a predefined level. These...

We propose a political economy mechanism that explains the presence of fiscal regimes punctuated by crisis periods. Our model focuses on the interaction between successive deficit-biased governments subject to i.i.d. fiscal shocks. We show that the economy transitions between a fiscally...

Can incorporating expectations-based-reference-dependence (EBRD) considerations reduce seemingly dominated choices in the Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism? We run two experiments (total N = 500) where participants are randomly assigned into one of four DA variants--{static, dynamic} * {student...

How does lie detection constrain the potential for one person to persuade another to change her action? We consider a model of Bayesian persuasion in which the Receiver can detect lies with positive probability. We show that the Sender lies more when the lie detection probability increases. As...

We study a standard collective action problem in which successful achievement of a group interest requires costly participation by some fraction of its members. How should we model the internal organization of these groups when there is asymmetric information about the preferences of their...