Reputation and Efficiency: Information Design

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Vong, Allen
• 署名单位: National University of Singapore
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-MICROECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7669
• DOI: 10.1257/mic.20220374
• 发表日期: 2025
• 页码: 191-243
• 关键词: Certification; governance; games

摘要

A firm trades with a sequence of consumers who are unsure about the firm's competence and its effort to supply quality. I examine rating systems that sustain efficient outcomes in virtually all trades by providing consumers with information to motivate a patient-competent firm's effort. I characterize necessary and sufficient conditions for these systems to exist. I show that any such system censors the firm's track records, and explicitly construct one such system. This system reveals that the firm has produced consecutively many good outputs whenever this happens and hides all information otherwise. (JEL D21, D82, D83)