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How long have you been waiting? Explaining the role of irrelevant information in the promotion of U.S. Navy officers

Author

Listed:
  • Tom Ahn

    (Naval Postgraduate School)

  • Jason Niven

    (United States Navy)

  • Andrew Veilleux

    (United States Navy)

Abstract

While all information is potentially valuable to economic agents in making decisions, if there are acquisition and processing costs, they may choose to privilege cheaper information. This can be problematic when decisions, such as personnel evaluations for promotions, are important yet time sensitive. Using administrative data of U.S. Navy officers and exploiting a Department of Defense personnel policy change, we explore how removing information which reveals how many times a candidate has been judged for promotion in the past impacts current promotion boards' up-or-down decisions. We find that removal of this cheap information by hiding prior outcomes increases promotion chances of first-time as well as previously pass-over candidates, implying that promotion boards have relied on the judgement of future and past promotion boards in addition to processing relevant performance information.

Suggested Citation

  • Tom Ahn & Jason Niven & Andrew Veilleux, 2021. "How long have you been waiting? Explaining the role of irrelevant information in the promotion of U.S. Navy officers," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 41(2), pages 604-614.
    • Handle: RePEc:ebl:ecbull:eb-20-01150
    as

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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Promotion; Information; Learning;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J6 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers
    • J5 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining

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