IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v143y2024icp340-356.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Independent versus collective expertise

Author

Listed:
  • Catonini, Emiliano
  • Kurbatov, Andrey
  • Stepanov, Sergey

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Catonini, Emiliano & Kurbatov, Andrey & Stepanov, Sergey, 2024. "Independent versus collective expertise," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 340-356.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:143:y:2024:i:c:p:340-356
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2023.12.001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825623001902
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2023.12.001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    2. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    3. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2013. "Is Transparency To No Avail?," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 115(4), pages 967-994, October.
    4. Emeric Henry & Charles Louis-Sidois, 2020. "Voting and Contributing When the Group Is Watching," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 246-276, August.
    5. Ali, S. Nageeb & Bohren, J. Aislinn, 2019. "Should straw polls be banned?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 284-294.
    6. EllenE. Meade & David Stasavage, 2008. "Publicity of Debate and the Incentive to Dissent: Evidence from the US Federal Reserve," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 695-717, April.
    7. Bauke Visser & Otto H. Swank, 2007. "On Committees of Experts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 337-372.
    8. Catonini, Emiliano & Stepanov, Sergey, 2023. "Reputation and information aggregation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 156-173.
    9. David Austen-Smith & Timothy Feddersen, 2005. "Deliberation and Voting Rules," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 269-316, Springer.
    10. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter, 2001. "Information aggregation in debate: who should speak first?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 393-421, September.
    11. Sebastian Fehrler & Niall Hughes, 2018. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 181-209, February.
    12. McGee, Andrew & Yang, Huanxing, 2013. "Cheap talk with two senders and complementary information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 181-191.
    13. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2001. "A Model of Expertise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 747-775.
    14. , & ,, 2008. "Multi-sender cheap talk with restricted state spaces," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 3(1), March.
    15. Van Weelden, Richard, 2008. "Deliberation Rules and Voting," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 3(1), pages 83-88, January.
    16. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sorensen, 2006. "Reputational Cheap Talk," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 155-175, Spring.
    17. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2006. "Reputational cheap talk," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 155-175, March.
    18. Matthew Elliott & Benjamin Golub & Andrei Kirilenko, 2014. "How Sharing Information Can Garble Experts' Advice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 463-468, May.
    19. Austen-Smith, David & Feddersen, Timothy J., 2006. "Deliberation, Preference Uncertainty, and Voting Rules," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 100(2), pages 209-217, May.
    20. Krishna, Vijay, 2001. "Asymmetric Information and Legislative Rules: Some Amendments," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(2), pages 435-452, June.
    21. Feddersen, Timothy & Gradwohl, Ronen, 2020. "Decentralized advice," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    22. Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Eliciting information from multiple experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 141-160, October.
    23. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    24. Coughlan, Peter J., 2000. "In Defense of Unanimous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 375-393, June.
    25. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision–Making Procedures for Committees of Careerist Experts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 306-310, May.
    26. Li Ming, 2010. "Advice from Multiple Experts: A Comparison of Simultaneous, Sequential, and Hierarchical Communication," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-24, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sebastian Fehrler & Moritz Janas, 2021. "Delegation to a Group," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3714-3743, June.
    2. Li, Zhuozheng & Rantakari, Heikki & Yang, Huanxing, 2016. "Competitive cheap talk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-89.
    3. Liu, Yaozhou Franklin & Sanyal, Amal, 2012. "When second opinions hurt: A model of expert advice under career concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16.
    4. Fehrler, Sebastian & Hughes, Niall, 2014. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation (And Why That May Be A Good Thing)," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100440, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    5. Minozzi, William & Woon, Jonathan, 2019. "The limited value of a second opinion: Competition and exaggeration in experimental cheap talk games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 144-162.
    6. Archishman Chakraborty & Rick Harbaugh, 2010. "Persuasion by Cheap Talk," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2361-2382, December.
      • Archishman Chakraborty & Rick Harbaugh, 2006. "Persuasion by Cheap Talk," Working Papers 2006-10, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy, revised Oct 2009.
    7. Balmaceda, Felipe, 2021. "Private vs. public communication: Difference of opinion and reputational concerns," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    8. Di Maggio, Marco, 2009. "Accountability and Cheap Talk," MPRA Paper 18652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Sebastian Fehrler & Niall Hughes, 2018. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation: Theory and Experiment," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(1), pages 181-209, February.
    10. Ambrus, Attila & Lu, Shih En, 2014. "Almost fully revealing cheap talk with imperfectly informed senders," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 174-189.
    11. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    12. Dugar, Subhasish & Shahriar, Quazi, 2023. "Lying for votes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 46-72.
    13. McGee, Andrew & Yang, Huanxing, 2013. "Cheap talk with two senders and complementary information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 181-191.
    14. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.
    15. Zapechelnyuk, Andriy, 2013. "Eliciting information from a committee," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 2049-2067.
    16. Alexander E. Saak & David A. Hennessy, 2018. "A model of reporting and controlling outbreaks by public health agencies," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 66(1), pages 21-64, July.
    17. Galeotti, Andrea & Ghiglino, Christian & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic information transmission networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1751-1769.
    18. Otto H. Swank & Bauke Visser, 2009. "Decision Making and Learning in a Globalizing World," Economics Working Papers ECO2009/20, European University Institute.
    19. Dimitri Landa & Adam Meirowitz, 2009. "Game Theory, Information, and Deliberative Democracy," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(2), pages 427-444, April.
    20. Szalay, Dezső & Deimen, Inga, 2020. "Authority in a theory of the firm," CEPR Discussion Papers 15026, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information aggregation; Reputation; Cheap talk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:143:y:2024:i:c:p:340-356. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.