We investigate the effect of the volunteering of others on the likelihood that an individual will also engage in volunteering activities. The theoretical part of our analysis is based on a sequential signaling framework, in which the decisions of others to volunteer are informative as to the...

This paper revisits the problem of adverse selection in the insurance market of Rothschild and Stiglitz (1976). We propose a simple extension of the game-theoretic structure in Hellwig (1987) under which Nash-type strategic interaction between the informed customers and the uninformed firms...

I develop a model of endogenous bounded rationality due to search costs, arising implicitly from the decision problem's complexity. The decision maker is not required to know the entire structure of the problem when making choices. She can think ahead, through costly search, to reveal more of...

In this analysis, we examine the relationship between an individual’s decision to volunteer and the average level of volunteering in the community where the individual resides. Our theoretical model is based on a coordination game , in which volunteering by others is informative regarding the...

Is there a rational component in the decision to commit suicide? Economists have been trying to shed light on this question by studying whether suicide rates are related to contemporaneous conditions. This paper goes one step further: we test whether suicides are linked to forward-looking...