Large internet platforms collect data from individual users in almost every interaction on the internet. Whenever an individual browses a news website, searches for a medical term or for a travel recommendation, or simply checks the weather forecast on an app, that individual generates data. A...

Large internet platforms collect data from individual users in almost every interaction on the internet. Whenever an individual browses a news website, searches for a medical term or for a travel recommendation, or simply checks the weather forecast on an app, that individual generates data. A...

We study to what extent information aggregation in social learning environments is robust to slight misperceptions of others' characteristics (e.g., tastes or risk attitudes). We consider a population of agents who obtain information about the state of the world both from initial private signals...

Examples of repeated destructive behavior abound throughout the history of human societies. This paper examines the role of social memory -- a society's vicarious beliefs about the past -- in creating and perpetuating destructive conflicts. We examine whether such behavior is consistent with the...

We exhibit a natural environment, social learning among heterogeneous agents, where even slight misperceptions can have a large negative impact on long-run learning outcomes. We consider a population of agents who obtain information about the state of the world both from initial private signals...

We study settings in which, prior to playing an incomplete information game, players observe many draws of private signals about the state from some information structure. Signals are i.i.d. across draws, but may display arbitrary correlation across players. For each information structure, we...

We study the intergenerational accumulation of knowledge in an infinite-horizon model of communication. Each in a sequence of players receives an informative but imperfect signal of the once-and-for-all realization of an unobserved state. The state affects all players' preferences over present...

Motivated by the fact that people's perceptions of their societies are routinely incorrect, we study the possibility and implications of misperception in social interactions. We focus on coordination games with assortative interactions, where agents with higher types (e.g., wealth, political...

Why did evolution not give us a utility function that is offspring alone? Why do we care intrinsically about other outcomes, food, for example, and what determines the intensity of such preferences? A common view is that such other outcomes enhance fitness and the intensity of our preference for...

Why did evolution not give us a utility function that is offspring alone? Why do we care intrinsically about other outcomes, such as food, and what determines the intensity of such preferences? A common view is that such other outcomes enhance fitness and the intensity of our preference for a...