Independent versus collective expertise

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Catonini, Emiliano; Kurbatov, Andrey; Stepanov, Sergey
• 署名单位: New York University; NYU Shanghai; INSEAD Business School; HSE University (National Research University Higher School of Economics)
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.12.001
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 340-356
• 关键词: Information aggregation; reputation; cheap talk

摘要

We consider the problem of a decision-maker who seeks for advice from several experts. The experts have reputation concerns which generate incentives to herd on the prior belief about the state of the world. We address the following question: Should the experts be allowed to exchange their information before providing advice (collective expertise) or not (independent expertise)? We show that collective expertise is more informative than independent expertise under low prior uncertainty about the state and less informative otherwise. We also argue that collective expertise gains advantage as the number of experts grows.