We study the life cycle of a firm that produces good unknown quality. The manages its quality by investing while consumers learn via public breakthroughs; if fails to generate such breakthroughs, revenue falls and it eventually exits. Optimal investment depends on firm’s reputation (the market’s belief about quality) self-esteem own quality), is single-peaked in time since breakthrough. derive ...

This paper studies competitive allocations under adverse selection. We first provide a general necessary and sufficient condition for entry on an inactive market to be unprofitable. then use this result characterize, active market, unique budget-balanced allocation implemented by tariff making additional trades with entrant Motivated the recursive structure of allocation, we finally show that i...

This paper studies, theoretically and experimentally, the effects of overconfidence fake news on information aggregation quality democratic choice in a common-interest setting. We show that exacerbates adverse widespread misinformation (i.e., news). then analyze richer models allow for partisanship, targeted intended to sway public opinion, signals correlated across voters (due media ownership ...

We study the impact of deliberation on intertemporal choices. Using multiple experiments, including a field in Democratic Republic Congo, we show that introduction waiting periods—a policy temporally separates information about choices from themselves—causes substantially less myopic decisions. These results cannot be captured by models exponential discounting nor present bias. Comparing effect...

We show how optimal saving in a two-period model is affected when prudence and risk aversion of the underlying utility function change. Increasing prudence alone will induce higher savings only if, for certain combinations of the interest rate and the pure time discount rate, there is distributional neutrality between the two periods. Otherwise, changes of risk aversion that affect the distribu...

The existing superstar model (Rosen, 1981) does not require imperfect substitutes, and the convexity of total earnings with respect to talent is due to greater output for those with more talent. Our model explains why wages would increase at an increasing rate in talent. Imperfect substitutability between non-superstars and superstars with probabilistic production results in convexity in wage r...

This paper constructs a simple model to illustrate that the current food stamp subsidy scheme fails to achieve its aim due to the crowding-out effect. In particular, if the household income is sufficiently low, only the corner solution exists and full subsidy is needed. The optimal food stamp subsidy scheme is identified and the subsidy efficiency rate is introduced to measure the impact on foo...

Focusing theory hypothesizes a bias toward concentration according to which consumers prefer goods with one outstanding feature over those with several smaller sized upsides. In contrast to models of present-biased behavior, focusing theory prescribes also future-biased behavior if an option’s future reward is particularly outstanding. Our laboratory experiment yields substantial support for th...

This paper pits neoclassical theory against prospect theory by investigating several clean tests of the competing hypotheses. Consistent with previous work, the field experimental data suggest that prospect theory adequately organizes behavior among inexperienced consumers, whereas consumers with intense market experience behave largely in accordance with neoclassical predictions. The data indi...

We document heterogeneity in the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) across household characteristics relevant understanding heterogeneous agent models and monetary policy transmission. find a strong negative relationship between liquid wealth MPC. show that predicts MPC closely for every other characteristic we look at. use new empirical method overcomes sources of bias found existing literat...