This study considers a dynamic search market where sellers and buyers are paired to trade a unit good under two-sided quality uncertainty. I compare the effects of disclosing and concealing past asking prices on economic efficiency and surplus distribution among market participants. The search market serves as an endogenous outside option for buyers who privately inspect products and decide whether to trade. The main results show that concealing prices benefits efficiency and results in a larger buyer surplus, whereas sellers can use disclosed high past prices as a beneficial commitment device to sustain more favorable quality beliefs and earn higher profits from buyers.

This paper proposes a behavioral foundation for information design when information changes both what a loss-averse agent believes and the reference point relative to which he evaluates esteem. This dual role of the same expectation creates a central tension: a more favorable belief raises both confidence and the esteem reference, which compresses prospective gains and enlarges prospective losses. This reference channel can weaken, reverse, or render nonmonotone the canonical motivational role of favorable beliefs. The result is a preference-based taxonomy of beliefs that motivate and sort rational agents according to their preferences over the psychological stakes defined by those beliefs.

Under a conventional scheme, offset fees increase with emissions. We instead evaluate a flat offset scheme, which equates offset fees across low- and high-footprint products, making low-footprint options disproportionately expensive, against the conventional proportional offset scheme. Surprisingly, the flat scheme increases the choice share of proclimate goods, despite its higher price. This finding is consistent with climate-concerned consumers responding to reduced uncertainty about the most climate-friendly choice and image-concerned consumers responding to its increased image value.

This study examines relative reputational herding in a social-learning environment with uncertainty about a persistent state, where agents are also evaluated for an unknown type. A predecessor's action affects social learning about the state, and the reputation generated by that action becomes the evaluative reference inherited by the next generation. Herding depends jointly on shared information and reputational references set by past actions.