Dear all, our second speaker in the CEU in-person economics seminar next week is Roland Benabou (Princeton), and you are cordially invited to attend this seminar. Title of the seminar: "It Hurts to Ask" (with Ania Jaroszewicz (Harvard), George Loewenstein (Carnegie Mellon)). Time and venue: December 15, Thursday, 11.15am-12.30pm, 51 Quellenstrasse 1100 Vienna, room: B505. Abstract: We analyze the offering, asking, and granting of help or other benefits as a three-stage game with bilateral private information between a person in need of help and a potential help-giver. Asking entails the risk of rejection, which can be painful: since unawareness of the need can no longer be an excuse, a refusal reveals that the person in need, or the relationship, is not valued very much. We show that a failure to ask can occur even when most helpers would help if told about the need, and that even though a greater need makes help both more valuable and more likely to be granted, it can reduce the propensity to ask. Furthermore, when potential helpers concerned about the recipient's ask-shyness can make spontaneous offers, this can turn out to be a double-edged sword: offering reveals a more caring type and helps solve the failure-to-ask problem, but not offering reveals a not-so-caring one, and this itself deters asking. This discouragement effect can also generate a trap where those in need wait for an offer, while potential helpers wait for an ask, resulting in significant inefficiencies. Speaker's website: https://rbenabou.scholar.princeton.edu/. For any inquiries, contact the CEU econ seminar organizer, Timea L. Molnar, at molnartl@ceu.edu<mailto:molnartl@ceu.edu>.