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Abstract
An important task for organisations is establishing truthful communication between parties with differing interests. This task is made particularly challenging when the accuracy of the information is poorly observed or not at all. In these settings, incentive contracts based on the accuracy of information will not be very effective. This paper considers an alternative mechanism that does not require any signal of the accuracy of any information communicated to provide incentives for truthful communication. Rather, an expert sacrifices future participation in decision-making to influence the current period's decision in favour of their preferred project. This mechanism captures a notion often described as 'political capital' whereby an individual is able to achieve their own preferred decision in the current period at the expense of being able to exert influence in future decisions ('spending political capital'). When the first-best is not possible in this setting, I show that experts hold more influence than under the first-best and that, in a multi-agent extension, a finite team size is optimal. Together these results suggest that a small number of individuals hold excessive influence in organisations.

AbstractLearning from friends is a key process by which consumers acquire information about available products. This article embeds social learning in a model of firms producing differentiated products. I consider how the structure of social relationships between consumers influences pricing and welfare. In particular, how a variety of characteristics of social networks ‐ distribution of friendships, homophily, clustering, and correlations between an individual's preferences and number of friends ‐ influence these outcomes. I also find conditions under which consumer awareness and the sensitivity of demand to prices are useful measures of the informational efficiency of markets.

This paper develops a model of demand, pricing and advertising in the presence of social learning via word-of-mouth communication between friends. In the model consumers must receive information about a monopolist's product in order to consider purchasing it. The presence of word-of-mouth is not sufficient for demand to be more elastic and prices to be lower compared to an informed population. I derive the comparative static results of connectivity, mean-preserving spread of friendships, and clustering of friends on prices. The optimal targets for advertising are not, generically, the individuals with the most friends. (JEL L12, L14)

US fertility changes are structured in a way that exaggerates upward & downward trends in annual measures of fertility, relative to the average number of children that women have. In the 1950s, a period of relatively inflated fertility occurred; during the 1970s, relatively depressed fertility is apparent. The childbearing expectations of young women suggest that annual fertility rates will increase in the near future, but do not provide any reason to believe that there will be a substantial increase in fertility. The causes of shifts in fertility rates are not yet fully known, but some promising hypotheses have been proposed & are being tested. 3 Figures, 7 Tables, 4 Charts. Modified HA.

The processes of fertility change in the United States are structured in a way that exaggerates the upward and downward trends in annual measures of fertility, relative to underlying trends in the average number of children that women have during their reproductive years of life. In the 1950s, we witnessed a period of relatively inflated fertility; in the 1970s we are apparently going through a period of relatively depressed fertility. The childbearing expectations of young women suggest that annual fertility rates will rise in the near future, but do not provide any reason to believe that there will be a substantial increase in fertility comparable to that occurring between the 1930s and the 1950s. The causes of swings in fertility rates are not yet fully known, but some promising hypotheses have been proposed and are being tested.

We model the incentives of individuals to engage in word of mouth (or buzz) about a product, and how a firm may strategically influence this process through its information release and advertising strategies. Individuals receive utility by improving how others perceive them. A firm restricts access to information, advertising may crowd out word of mouth, and a credible commitment not to engage in advertising is valuable for a firm.