We present a competitive model of takeovers among heterogeneous firms. Each firm owns a tradeable "project" and non-tradeable "skill". The complementarity between them generates takeovers. We construct an equilibrium with two segmented markets. In one market, firms pay a fee to an intermediary to fully disclose their project quality. In the other market, firms reveal at no cost that their project quality is above a minimum standard. The latter market matches projects to skill randomly. Yet, it significantly improves welfare by raising the elasticity of the demand for the full disclosure service. Regulations necessary to support this equilibrium are discussed.
{"title":"Disclosure Services and Endogenous Segmentation in Takeover Markets","authors":"K. Kawakami","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3595002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3595002","url":null,"abstract":"We present a competitive model of takeovers among heterogeneous firms. Each firm owns a tradeable \"project\" and non-tradeable \"skill\". The complementarity between them generates takeovers. We construct an equilibrium with two segmented markets. In one market, firms pay a fee to an intermediary to fully disclose their project quality. In the other market, firms reveal at no cost that their project quality is above a minimum standard. The latter market matches projects to skill randomly. Yet, it significantly improves welfare by raising the elasticity of the demand for the full disclosure service. Regulations necessary to support this equilibrium are discussed.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130909565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although outsourcing vs. vertical integration is generally treated as a binary choice in international trade literature, firm-level data reveal that inputs can be imported both within and across firms' boundaries, even within narrowly defined industries from the same host country. This paper outlines a model of foreign sourcing which accommodates this practice (defined as mixed-sourcing) based on information asymmetries between a firm and suppliers on both (i) the firm's cost in transmitting knowledge across borders; and (ii) the supplier's productivity in using this know-how to customize input provision. Supply relationships establish that the firm gives an ownership share to its foreign supplier. The paper explores under what conditions the firm engages in multiple relations with suppliers of different types (high and low productive ones) based on differentiated ownership shares, thus compatible with the evidence of mixed-sourcing.
{"title":"Foreign Sourcing and Technology Transfer under Asymmetric Information","authors":"Stefano Bolatto, G. Pignataro","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3585010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3585010","url":null,"abstract":"Although outsourcing vs. vertical integration is generally treated as a binary choice in international trade literature, firm-level data reveal that inputs can be imported both within and across firms' boundaries, even within narrowly defined industries from the same host country. This paper outlines a model of foreign sourcing which accommodates this practice (defined as mixed-sourcing) based on information asymmetries between a firm and suppliers on both (i) the firm's cost in transmitting knowledge across borders; and (ii) the supplier's productivity in using this know-how to customize input provision. Supply relationships establish that the firm gives an ownership share to its foreign supplier. The paper explores under what conditions the firm engages in multiple relations with suppliers of different types (high and low productive ones) based on differentiated ownership shares, thus compatible with the evidence of mixed-sourcing.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114269821","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The market for corporate control plays an important role during industry shocks. However, this market fails in the presence of asymmetric information. I investigate the consequences of market failures for efficient firms that face difficulties to adapt to shocks because of informational frictions. I propose that alliances are a valuable alternative for these firms because ownership-sharing ameliorates informational frictions that induce market failures. I report empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. Valuation uncertainty and the cost to access external credit increases the odds of establishing alliances during shocks and these alliances create more value than alliances announced in other periods.
{"title":"The Economic Role of Alliances during Industry Shocks","authors":"T. Mantecón","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3570272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3570272","url":null,"abstract":"The market for corporate control plays an important role during industry shocks. However, this market fails in the presence of asymmetric information. I investigate the consequences of market failures for efficient firms that face difficulties to adapt to shocks because of informational frictions. I propose that alliances are a valuable alternative for these firms because ownership-sharing ameliorates informational frictions that induce market failures. I report empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis. Valuation uncertainty and the cost to access external credit increases the odds of establishing alliances during shocks and these alliances create more value than alliances announced in other periods.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-04-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121615310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We develop a model wherein a reputation for prosecutorial malfeasance reduces the willingness of witnesses to cooperate with prosecutors. This causes an increase in the crime rate and in wrongly-convicted innocent defendants. Because citizens are taxpayers and may be victims, perpetrators, witnesses, or falsely-accused defendants, they care about the prosecutor’s quality. They update beliefs about this quality based on the disposition of cases. If the prosecutor’s believed quality falls below a threshold, then a majority of voters choose to replace the prosecutor with a challenger, in expectation of reform. We compare the majority’s choice with that of a social planner.
{"title":"Enforcement Malfeasance, Witness Participation, Crime, and Reform","authors":"A. Daughety, Jennifer F. Reinganum","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3516850","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3516850","url":null,"abstract":"We develop a model wherein a reputation for prosecutorial malfeasance reduces the willingness of witnesses to cooperate with prosecutors. This causes an increase in the crime rate and in wrongly-convicted innocent defendants. Because citizens are taxpayers and may be victims, perpetrators, witnesses, or falsely-accused defendants, they care about the prosecutor’s quality. They update beliefs about this quality based on the disposition of cases. If the prosecutor’s believed quality falls below a threshold, then a majority of voters choose to replace the prosecutor with a challenger, in expectation of reform. We compare the majority’s choice with that of a social planner.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"124 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124530413","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
We investigate a firm's pre-emptive behavior by comparing Cournot competition and Stackelberg games with one leader and multiple followers, where each firm has access to private information on stochastic demand. We show that the firm prefers pre-emptive quantity choice (Stackelberg leader) to simultaneous quantity choice (Cournot firm) if and only if the firm is ignorant of the market size comparative to the other firm. The firm's decision in terms of production timing is always detrimental to producer surplus in the industry. It is beneficial to consumer surplus in duopoly competition, but detrimental when there are many competitors in the market.
{"title":"Pre-emptive Production and Market Competitiveness in Oligopoly with Private Information","authors":"Yuki Amemiya, A. Ishihara, Tomoya Nakamura","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3142531","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3142531","url":null,"abstract":"We investigate a firm's pre-emptive behavior by comparing Cournot competition and Stackelberg games with one leader and multiple followers, where each firm has access to private information on stochastic demand. We show that the firm prefers pre-emptive quantity choice (Stackelberg leader) to simultaneous quantity choice (Cournot firm) if and only if the firm is ignorant of the market size comparative to the other firm. The firm's decision in terms of production timing is always detrimental to producer surplus in the industry. It is beneficial to consumer surplus in duopoly competition, but detrimental when there are many competitors in the market.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"586 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124616464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Problem definition: We consider opportunities for cooperation at the supply level between two firms that are rivals in the end-product market. One of our firms is vertically integrated (VI), has in-house production capabilities, and may also supply its rival. The other is a downstream outsourcing (DO) firm that has better market information. The DO is willing to consider a supply partnership with the VI, but it also has the option to use the outside supply market. Academic/practical relevance: Such co-opetitive practices are common in industrial supply chains, but firms’ co-opetitive strategic sourcing with the potential of information leakage has not been examined in the literature. Methodology: We build a game-theoretic model to capture the firms’ strategic interactions under the co-opetitive supply partnership with the potential information leakage. Results: The DO exploits its information advantage to obtain a better wholesale price from the VI and may use dual sourcing to protect its private information. Anticipating that, the VI may offer wholesale price concessions as an information rent to obtain the DO’s information. Our work identifies demand uncertainty and efficiency of outside supply market as the factors affecting the VI’s pricing decision and the resulting equilibrium. Pooling equilibrium arises often, but in a few cases, the equilibrium is separating. At the separating equilibrium, the DO always single sources, either from the VI or the independent supplier depending on the demand state. The VI benefits from ancillary revenue-generating opportunity, and from information acquisition in a separating equilibrium. On the other hand, the DO’s benefit is a cheaper price in exchange for market information in a separating equilibrium. In the pooling case, the DO uses dual sourcing to hide demand information, especially in the high demand case, and to better supply the end-market through his accurate demand information. Managerial implications: Our work provides useful insights into firms’ strategic sourcing behaviors to efficiently deal with the potential of information leakage in the co-opetitive supply environment and for the rationale behind such relationships often observed in industries.
{"title":"On Co-opetitive Supply Partnerships with End-Product Rivals: Information Asymmetry, Dual Sourcing and Supply Market Efficiency","authors":"S. Jung, P. Kouvelis","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3555184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3555184","url":null,"abstract":"Problem definition: We consider opportunities for cooperation at the supply level between two firms that are rivals in the end-product market. One of our firms is vertically integrated (VI), has in-house production capabilities, and may also supply its rival. The other is a downstream outsourcing (DO) firm that has better market information. The DO is willing to consider a supply partnership with the VI, but it also has the option to use the outside supply market. Academic/practical relevance: Such co-opetitive practices are common in industrial supply chains, but firms’ co-opetitive strategic sourcing with the potential of information leakage has not been examined in the literature. Methodology: We build a game-theoretic model to capture the firms’ strategic interactions under the co-opetitive supply partnership with the potential information leakage. Results: The DO exploits its information advantage to obtain a better wholesale price from the VI and may use dual sourcing to protect its private information. Anticipating that, the VI may offer wholesale price concessions as an information rent to obtain the DO’s information. Our work identifies demand uncertainty and efficiency of outside supply market as the factors affecting the VI’s pricing decision and the resulting equilibrium. Pooling equilibrium arises often, but in a few cases, the equilibrium is separating. At the separating equilibrium, the DO always single sources, either from the VI or the independent supplier depending on the demand state. The VI benefits from ancillary revenue-generating opportunity, and from information acquisition in a separating equilibrium. On the other hand, the DO’s benefit is a cheaper price in exchange for market information in a separating equilibrium. In the pooling case, the DO uses dual sourcing to hide demand information, especially in the high demand case, and to better supply the end-market through his accurate demand information. Managerial implications: Our work provides useful insights into firms’ strategic sourcing behaviors to efficiently deal with the potential of information leakage in the co-opetitive supply environment and for the rationale behind such relationships often observed in industries.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-03-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123117487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
S. Angerer, Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, Christian Waibel
This paper investigates the impact of monitoring institutions on market outcomes in health care. Healthcare markets are characterized by asymmetric information. Physicians have an information advantage over patients with respect to appropriate treatments, which they may exploit through over- or under-provision or by overcharging. We introduce two types of costly monitoring: endogenous and exogenous monitoring. When monitoring detects misbehavior, physicians have to pay a fine. Endogenous monitoring can be requested by patients, while exogenous monitoring is performed randomly by a third party. We present a toy model that enables us to derive hypotheses and test them in a laboratory experiment. Our results show that introducing endogenous monitoring reduces the level of undertreatment and overcharging. Even under high monitoring costs, the threat of patient monitoring is sufficient to discipline physicians. Exogenous monitoring also reduces undertreatment and overcharging when performed sufficiently frequently. Market efficiency increases when endogenous monitoring is introduced and when exogenous monitoring is implemented with sufficient frequency. Our results suggest that monitoring may be a feasible instrument to improve outcomes in healthcare markets.
{"title":"Monitoring Institutions in Health Care Markets: Experimental Evidence","authors":"S. Angerer, Daniela Glätzle-Rützler, Christian Waibel","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3372994","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3372994","url":null,"abstract":"This paper investigates the impact of monitoring institutions on market outcomes in health care. Healthcare markets are characterized by asymmetric information. Physicians have an information advantage over patients with respect to appropriate treatments, which they may exploit through over- or under-provision or by overcharging. We introduce two types of costly monitoring: endogenous and exogenous monitoring. When monitoring detects misbehavior, physicians have to pay a fine. Endogenous monitoring can be requested by patients, while exogenous monitoring is performed randomly by a third party. We present a toy model that enables us to derive hypotheses and test them in a laboratory experiment. Our results show that introducing endogenous monitoring reduces the level of undertreatment and overcharging. Even under high monitoring costs, the threat of patient monitoring is sufficient to discipline physicians. Exogenous monitoring also reduces undertreatment and overcharging when performed sufficiently frequently. Market efficiency increases when endogenous monitoring is introduced and when exogenous monitoring is implemented with sufficient frequency. Our results suggest that monitoring may be a feasible instrument to improve outcomes in healthcare markets.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126829643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper studies implications of the ratcheting effect arising in the supply chain relationship. The ratcheting effect occurs when the retailer modifies his investment in the present period to receive a favorable wholesale price in the future. In a simple model of multi-period supply chain interactions, we demonstrate that such an endogenous ratcheting effect can have multi-faceted reverberations for the supply chain. We confirm the conventional wisdom that a retailer may take actions that harm the supply chain to stave off supplier opportunistic behavior. We consider two approaches to solve this ratcheting problem – market solution and regulatory solution. Under the market solution, we demonstrate that the traditional thinking is incomplete in that it fails to consider the supplier's endogenous response. Under the market solution, the supplier uses deep discounts of initial input prices to convince the retailer to focus on short-run profits rather than long-run concerns. These deep discounts not only encourage mutually beneficial investments but also alleviate double-marginalization inefficiencies along the supply chain. Moreover, we compare those results to the regulatory solution case where the retailer's private information is publicly observed through mandatory disclosure policy. We show that such mandatory disclosure would reduce the total channel efficiency compared to the market solution, where the manufacturer can strategically mitigate the ratcheting problem. Therefore, our model presents not only a scenario where ratcheting concerns are endogenous but also one where such ratcheting concerns result in socially beneficial responses. That is, it can be welfare-enhancing to permit firms to withhold forward-looking information.
{"title":"Information Disclosure Policy and Ratcheting in Supply Chains","authors":"B. Mittendorf, Jiwoong Shin, Dae-Hee Yoon","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3541949","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3541949","url":null,"abstract":"This paper studies implications of the ratcheting effect arising in the supply chain relationship. The ratcheting effect occurs when the retailer modifies his investment in the present period to receive a favorable wholesale price in the future. In a simple model of multi-period supply chain interactions, we demonstrate that such an endogenous ratcheting effect can have multi-faceted reverberations for the supply chain. We confirm the conventional wisdom that a retailer may take actions that harm the supply chain to stave off supplier opportunistic behavior. We consider two approaches to solve this ratcheting problem – market solution and regulatory solution. Under the market solution, we demonstrate that the traditional thinking is incomplete in that it fails to consider the supplier's endogenous response. Under the market solution, the supplier uses deep discounts of initial input prices to convince the retailer to focus on short-run profits rather than long-run concerns. These deep discounts not only encourage mutually beneficial investments but also alleviate double-marginalization inefficiencies along the supply chain. Moreover, we compare those results to the regulatory solution case where the retailer's private information is publicly observed through mandatory disclosure policy. We show that such mandatory disclosure would reduce the total channel efficiency compared to the market solution, where the manufacturer can strategically mitigate the ratcheting problem. Therefore, our model presents not only a scenario where ratcheting concerns are endogenous but also one where such ratcheting concerns result in socially beneficial responses. That is, it can be welfare-enhancing to permit firms to withhold forward-looking information.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114752289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A strategy is truth-telling dominating (TTD) if it weakly (strictly, resp.) dominates truth-telling for all (some, resp.) strategy profiles of others. A strategy is iteratively TTD (i-TTD) if any iterate is TTD and payoff improving. We show that any mechanism only with undominated equilibria is not i-TTD manipulable. We also show that any TTD shill-bidding strategy is i-TTD. The Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is not shill-proof, but neither the existence nor the nonexistence of TTD strategy had previously been known. We show both that VCG is TTD manipulable when externalities exist, but not TTD manipulable in package auctions without externalities.
{"title":"Truth-Telling Dominating Strategy: Impossibilities of Shill-Proofness","authors":"Seungwon (Eugene) Jeong","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3573629","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3573629","url":null,"abstract":"A strategy is truth-telling dominating (TTD) if it weakly (strictly, resp.) dominates truth-telling for all (some, resp.) strategy profiles of others. A strategy is iteratively TTD (i-TTD) if any iterate is TTD and payoff improving. We show that any mechanism only with undominated equilibria is not i-TTD manipulable. We also show that any TTD shill-bidding strategy is i-TTD. The Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) mechanism is not shill-proof, but neither the existence nor the nonexistence of TTD strategy had previously been known. We show both that VCG is TTD manipulable when externalities exist, but not TTD manipulable in package auctions without externalities.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"30 2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129058609","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
An information designer has access to a set of experiments and decides which of these to assign to each of the agents in a directed network. The network encodes informational spillovers: an agent has access to the experiments assigned to her, as well as to those assigned to any other agent who has a directed path to her. We establish that the designer's problem in any network can be reduced to an equivalent problem in a directed acyclic network. We show that when in the latter network each agent follows at most one other agent (i.e., each node has in-degree at most one), the optimal information structure can be obtained in a tractable way. The problem becomes intractable if some agents follow multiple other agents. Thus, qualitatively, following multiple information sources is what makes information design problems intractable in the presence of spillovers. We also study a voting game with binary actions in the presence of spillovers. We show that when the followers are more pessimistic (i.e., have higher posterior mean requirements to take action $1$), the network effects do not play a role, and a certain monotone information structure is optimal. When the followers are more optimistic a monotone information structure is still optimal if each agent follows at most one other agent, but not in general. That said, in the latter case an optimal monotone information structure can be obtained in a tractable way by using an algorithm we provide, provided that the underlying network has bounded treewidth.
{"title":"On Information Design with Spillovers","authors":"Ozan Candogan","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3537289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3537289","url":null,"abstract":"An information designer has access to a set of experiments and decides which of these to assign to each of the agents in a directed network. The network encodes informational spillovers: an agent has access to the experiments assigned to her, as well as to those assigned to any other agent who has a directed path to her. We establish that the designer's problem in any network can be reduced to an equivalent problem in a directed acyclic network. We show that when in the latter network each agent follows at most one other agent (i.e., each node has in-degree at most one), the optimal information structure can be obtained in a tractable way. The problem becomes intractable if some agents follow multiple other agents. Thus, qualitatively, following multiple information sources is what makes information design problems intractable in the presence of spillovers. We also study a voting game with binary actions in the presence of spillovers. We show that when the followers are more pessimistic (i.e., have higher posterior mean requirements to take action $1$), the network effects do not play a role, and a certain monotone information structure is optimal. When the followers are more optimistic a monotone information structure is still optimal if each agent follows at most one other agent, but not in general. That said, in the latter case an optimal monotone information structure can be obtained in a tractable way by using an algorithm we provide, provided that the underlying network has bounded treewidth.","PeriodicalId":232169,"journal":{"name":"ERN: Other Microeconomics: Asymmetric & Private Information (Topic)","volume":"62 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124003321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：