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Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Attention

American Economic Review 2019 109(8), 2993-3029 open access
We consider a decision maker (DM) who, before taking an action, seeks information by allocating her limited attention dynamically over different news sources that are biased toward alternative actions. Endogenous choice of information generates rich dynamics: the chosen news source either reinforces or weakens the prior, shaping subsequent attention choices, belief updating, and the final action. The DM adopts a learning strategy biased toward the current belief when the belief is extreme and against that belief when it is moderate. Applied to consumption of news media, observed behavior exhibits an “ echo-chamber” effect for partisan voters and a novel “ anti-echo-chamber” effect for moderates.

Auctions with Limited Commitment

American Economic Review 2019 109(3), 876-910
We study the role of limited commitment in a standard auction environment. In each period, the seller can commit to an auction with a reserve price but not to future reserve prices. We characterize the set of equilibrium profits attainable for the seller as the period length vanishes. An immediate sale by efficient auction is optimal when there are at least three buyers. For many natural distributions two buyers is enough. Otherwise, we give conditions under which the maximal profit is attained through continuously declining reserve prices.