Can consumer reviews form barriers to entry? If so, what can review platforms do about it? The answer: stop well-established firms from acquiring new reviews econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
A news platform shapes consumers' beliefs with information and narratives (models of what determines outcomes). The strategy that maximizes their anticipatory utility combines biased information and false narratives, and induces belief polarization econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
How does ambiguous product information affect trade between a price-setting seller and an ambiguity-sensitive buyer? We find that the right kind of ambiguous information makes the buyer or seller better off than any possible unambiguous information econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
This paper characterizes when and how robust decisions can be objectively improved with data econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Does freer trade necessarily raise welfare for all? No. This paper shows that a country prefers autarky to frictionless trade with a sufficiently less productive partner. Losses arise due to displaced domestic varieties. @JustinTumlinson econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Theoretical Economics Volume 21, Issue 1 (January 2026) is now online econtheory.org
Our new paper “Efficient investment, search, and sorting in matching markets” is at @TE. We show a new second welfare theorem for search markets, e.g. labour, marriage, or products: the market can overcome the hold-up and matching problems econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
The paper focuses on a single intrinsic difference between physical and digital currency: traceability. This technological advance in record-keeping can be used by the monetary authority to achieve efficiency in a wide range of circumstances econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
The paper studies reputational bargaining in which the stubborn type can choose their initial demand. Types can pool or separate in equilibrium. When the probability of the stubborn type is small, any feasible payoff can be achieved in equilibrium econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
We revisit revealed preference analysis when choices are observed imprecisely. Building on Afriat and Fishburn, we study rationalization when the analyst only knows that the agent chose *some* option within a set econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
if we randomly sample economies from a distribution, will the stable assignments of these economies converge to a stable assignment of the limit economy as we increase the sample? I provide a condition on the economy that guarantees this convergence econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
A dynamic model of durable-good monopoly where the seller minimises lifetime regret against the worst-case type of buyer econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Theoretical Economics Volume 20, Issue 4 (November 2025) is now online econtheory.org
We study stochastic choice using marginal distributions of menus and choices. RUM has no testable implications, but any domain restriction generates data restrictions. Luce also rationalizes any dataset, but unlike RUM its parameters are identified econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
This paper shows that the limit equilibrium payoff set for stochastic games with imperfect public monitoring expands when the monitoring structure improves in the information order based on a weaker notion of garbling called weighted garbling econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
How does verifiable information flow through networks? Full disclosure arises only when all players are biased in the same direction relative to the decision maker. Hence, the optimal network is a line where players are ordered by their preferences econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Perfectly patient and monotone preferences on infinite utility streams can allow for strict comparisons of almost all utility streams econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Robust contracts for agents with unknown beliefs econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Standard dynamic preference models cannot simultaneously satisfy the properties of time consistency, the separation of time and risk preferences and the ability to accommodate an indifference to the timing of when risk is resolved econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
What is the efficient provision of public information in frictional search markets?
I characterize the constrained-efficient market segmentation when agents use it to direct their search econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
The Executive Committee of the Econometric Society has approved an increase in the publication fees for papers in its two Open Access journals, Quantitative Economics and Theoretical Economics. Read more www.econometricsociety.org/society/news...
How does information shape monopoly outcomes under interdependent values? We characterize payoff sets across three classes of information structures. With no restrictions, buyers can obtain the entire surplus even though the seller chooses a price econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
We extend Bayesian persuasion to dynamic environments with Markovian states. Optimal info disclosure trades off current vs. future discounted payoffs. We discuss optimal strategies and characterize when the asymptotic value hits its upper bound econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Under which conditions do Bayesian equilibria exist in Bayesian games with general type spaces? The paper shows the existence of a Bayesian equilibrium when information is nested, provided the sets of actions are finite econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
How does one optimally design mechanisms in contexts where evidence is stochastic, possibly because it must first be aquired? econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
A model a non-Bayesian agent who adjusts estimates based on past data but misattributes selection bias as systematic error. This naive calibration leads to pessimistic choices, reinforced by feedback loops. Applied to auctions & project selection econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Do partners always benefit from a more profitable partnership? Not necessarily. This paper shows that higher profitability can prompt strategic exits by partners, leaving all partners strictly worse off econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Theoretical Economics Volume 20, Issue 3 (July 2025) is now online econtheory.org
How do sequential information choices affect the extent of coordination failure? We show that in the context of global games, the likelihood of coordination failure is invariant to precision, cost, and availability of information econtheory.org/ojs/index.ph...
Florian Brandl (University of Bonn), Eduardo Dávila (Yale University), Tommaso Denti (NYU), Kevin He (University of Pennsylvania), Nicolas Sebastien Lambert (USC), Annie Liang (Northwestern University), Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn (UCLA), & Colin Stewart (University of Toronto) 2/2
