We study the portfolio decision of a household with limited information-processing capacity in a setting with recursive utility. We find that rational inattention combined with a preference for early resolution of uncertainty leads to a significant drop in the share of portfolios held in risky assets, even when the departure from standard expected utility with rational expectations is small. In...

We propose a model of investment, duration, and exit strategies for start-ups backed by venture capital (VC) funds that accounts for the high level of uncertainty, the asymmetry of information between insiders and outsiders, and the discount rate. Our analysis predicts that start-ups backed by corporate VC funds remain for a longer period of time before exiting and receive larger investment amo...

This note analyzes a two-player all-pay auction with incomplete information. More precisely, one bidder is uncertain whether his rival has a head start, i.e., an initial advantage in the auction. The game has a unique Bayesian Nash equilibrium outcome whose shape depends on the expected head start. In equilibrium, the potentially stronger player generates an informational rent if and only if he...

We analyze a simple sunspot model that represents a standard securities market without sidebets on an exogenous sunspot event. The multiple self–fulfilling equilibria that arise in the model are based on investors’ uncertainty about other investors’ beliefs. Hence, these multiple equilibria are “endogenous sunspots.” We show that endogenous sunspots can arise even with complete markets to which...

We consider the optimal nonlinear income taxation problem in a dynamic, stochastic environment when the government cannot change the tax rule as uncertainty resolves. Due to such a stationarity constraint, our taxation problem is reduced to a static one over an expanded type space. We strengthen the argument in the static model that the zero topmarginal tax rate result is of little practical im...

We study the combined effects of uncertainty and competition on the timing optimization of investments in complementarity inputs for non-preemption duopoly (leader-follower) markets with either a weakpatent system where spillover-knowledge is allowed or a strong-patent system where proprietaryknowledge holds. We find that, for some input-sequencing investment scenarios, ex-ante and (expected) e...

This paper constructs a recursive utility version of a canonical Merton (1971) model with uninsurable labor income and unknown income growth to study how the interaction between two types of uncertainty due to ignorance affects strategic consumption-portfolio rules and precautionary savings. Specifically, after solving the model explicitly, we theoretically and quantitatively explore (i) how th...

Motivated by the extensive evidence about the relevance of status quo bias both in experiments and in real markets, we study this phenomenon from a decisiontheoretic prospective, focusing on the case of preferences under uncertainty. We develop an axiomatic framework that takes as a primitive the preferences of the agent for each possible status quo option, and provide a characterization accord...

The objects for sale in most auctions display both private and common value characteristics. This salient feature of many real-world auctions has not yet been incorporated into a strategic analysis of equilibrium bidding behavior. This paper reports such an analysis in the context of a stylized model in which bidders receive a private value signal and an independent common value signal. We show...

A recent literature suggests that because investment expenditures are irreversible and can be delayed, they may be highly sensitive to uncertainty. We briefly summarize the theory, stressing its empirical implications. We then use cross-section and time-series data for a set of developing and industrialized countries to explore the relevance of the theory for aggregate investment. We find that ...