Essays in Information Economics

This dissertation is a collection of three different papers on information economics. The first chapter studies information acquisition from peers, considering that agents act balancing adaptation and coordination motives. As agents choose which peers to acquire information from, they form a network. We show that the equilibrium network has a hierarchical structure, with some agents emerging as highly influential, as all other players acquire their information. The second chapter shows that in a principal-agent repeated relation plagued by the lack of principal commitment, the optimal relationship presents a loss of autonomy for the agent as time progresses. Finally, the third chapter investigates the economic implications of affirmative action (AA) in college admissions, such as quotas for low income students.