By endowing his agents with simple forecasting models, or representations, Woodford (1990) found that finite state Markov sunspot equilibria may be stable under learning. We show that common factor representations generalize to all sunspot equilibria the representations used by Woodford (1990). We find that if finite state Markov sunspots are stable under learning then all sunspots are stable u...

This paper studies a cheap talk model in which two senders having partial and non-overlapping private information simultaneously communicate with an uninformed receiver. The sensitivity of the receiver’s ideal action to one sender’s private information depends on the other sender’s private information. We show that the senders’information transmissions exhibit strategic complementarity: more in...

A model with two types of consumers, shoppers and captives, is constructed that leads to an equilibrium price dispersion. Shoppers may hold inventories of the good; the level of consumer inventories leads to state-dependent price dispersions. It is shown that prices and quantities display negative serial correlation. The model is tested using grocery store data, which display the predicted corr...

Optimal communication to a group often entails a trade-off between precision of information conveyed and common understanding (or approximate common knowledge) of the information within the group. We argue that an understanding of this trade-off is central in many contexts, including central bank communication and the design of accounting standards, as well as understanding the design of langua...

This paper studies organizations in which participants have common preferences but communication is costly. In this model, use words to describe similar information, but need not use precise words for frequent events and vague words for unusual ones. The model identifies a source of communication failure across units. It provides an argument for giving the best-informed agents decision-making a...

The paper analyses a simplified version of a Glosten-Milgrom style specialist security trading model with trade-timing. In a setting where traders are differentially informed, if the best-informed investors have a sufficiently strong or weak impact on prices then the investors with the strongest impact on prices delay their investment strategically, pretending to be the low-impact types. JEL Cl...

We analyze an equilibrium search model in a duopoly setting with bilateral heterogeneities in production and search costs in which firms can advertise by announcing price and location. We study existence, stability, and comparative statics in such a setting, compare the duopolistic advertising level to the socially optimal level, and find conditions in which a duopolist advertises more or less ...

This review paper provides an overview of the application of behavioral public economics to energy efficiency. I document policymakers’ arguments for “paternalistic” energy efficiency policies, formalize with a simple model of misoptimizing consumers, review and critique empirical evidence, and suggest future research directions. While empirical results suggest that policies to address imperfec...

We consider two Bayesian agents who learn from exogenously provided private signals, as well as the actions of the other. Our main finding is that increased interaction between the agents can lower the speed of learning: when both agents observe each other, learning is significantly slower than it is when one only observes the other. This slowdown is driven by a process in which a consensus on ...

Then, the limit points of the sequence of plays are correlated equilibria. In fact, for each correlated equilibrium there is some calibrated learning rule that the players can use which results in their playing this correlated equilibrium in the limit. Thus, the statistical concept of a calibration is strongly related to the game theoretic concept of correlated equilibrium. Journal of Economic ...