Information control in reputational cheap talk

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Anbarci, Nejat; Ghosh, Saptarshi R.; Roy, Jaideep
• 署名单位: Deakin University; Shiv Nadar University; University of Bath
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2017.09.010
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 153-160
• 关键词: Reputational cheap talk; Variance-minimising evaluation; Task difficulty; information control

摘要

An evaluator estimates as precisely as possible the innate talent of a careerist expert by observing the expert's performance in a prediction task, and has the ability to interfere with the expert's private signal by affecting its precision. The expert on the other hand knows her talent, observes this interference and can misrepresent private beliefs through strategic predictions to enhance her reputation. We show that when priors are significantly uninformative so that the task is a priori hard, the evaluator reduces the precision of the expert's signal, while when priors are significantly informative, he enhances it. We also find that the evaluator's objectives of maximising the precision of information about talent and maximising the probability of 'truthful expert advice' in the given task are aligned in and only in a priori hard tasks. We discuss implications of these results for market research decisions by a monopolist facing uncertain demand. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.