IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/soecon/v67y2000i1p139-154.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are People Sometimes Too Honest? Increasing, Decreasing, and Negative Returns to Honesty

Author

Listed:
  • Atin Basuchoudhary
  • John R. Conlon

Abstract

We show that sender honesty can hurt receivers in simple signaling games. The receiver faces a trade‐off between its ability to work with senders and the quality of information it can get and use from them. Our example also contradicts recent work suggesting that returns to honesty should be increasing. Positive, increasing returns are restored in our model if the receiver can precommit.

Suggested Citation

  • Atin Basuchoudhary & John R. Conlon, 2000. "Are People Sometimes Too Honest? Increasing, Decreasing, and Negative Returns to Honesty," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 67(1), pages 139-154, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:soecon:v:67:y:2000:i:1:p:139-154
    DOI: 10.1002/j.2325-8012.2000.tb00325.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2000.tb00325.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/j.2325-8012.2000.tb00325.x?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mossin, Jan, 1969. "A Note on Uncertainty and Preferences in a Temporal Context," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(1), pages 172-174, March.
    2. Page, Frank H, Jr, 1992. "Bayesian Incentive Compatible Mechanisms," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(4), pages 509-524, October.
    3. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    4. Kahn Charles M., 1993. "Existence and Characterization of Optimal Employment Contracts on a Continuous State Space," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 122-144, February.
    5. Joel Sobel, 1985. "A Theory of Credibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 557-573.
    6. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    7. Spence, Michael & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1972. "The Effect of the Timing of Consumption Decisions and the Resolution of Lotteries on the Choice of Lotteries," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 40(2), pages 401-403, March.
    8. Frank, Robert H, 1987. "If Homo Economicus Could Choose His Own Utility Function, Would He Want One with a Conscience?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(4), pages 593-604, September.
    9. Balder, Erik J., 1996. "On the Existence of Optimal Contract Mechanisms for Incomplete Information Principal-Agent Models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 68(1), pages 133-148, January.
    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. Kjell Hausken, 1997. "Game-theoretic and Behavioral Negotiation Theory," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 6(6), pages 511-528, December.
    2. Hidir, Sinem, 2017. "Information Acquisition and Credibility in Cheap Talk," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 36, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    3. Chen, Ying, 2011. "Perturbed communication games with honest senders and naive receivers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 401-424, March.
    4. Eduardo Perez & Delphine Prady, 2012. "Complicating to Persuade?," Working Papers hal-03583827, HAL.
    5. Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2014. "Interim Bayesian Persuasion: First Steps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 469-474, May.
    6. Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    7. Dobrin R. Kolev & Thomas J. Prusa, 1997. "Tariff Policy for a Monopolist Under Incomplete Information," NBER Working Papers 6090, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Dilmé, Francesc, 2019. "Dynamic quality signaling with hidden actions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 116-136.
    9. Hammad Siddiqi, 2007. "Stock Price Manipulation : The Role of Intermediaries," Finance Working Papers 22280, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    10. Dominiak, Adam & Lee, Dongwoo, 2023. "Testing rational hypotheses in signaling games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).
    11. Noldeka, G. & Samuelson, L., 1994. "Learning to Signal in Market," Working papers 9409, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    12. Lewis, Tracy R & Poitevin, Michel, 1997. "Disclosure of Information in Regulatory Proceedings," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 13(1), pages 50-73, April.
    13. Margaria, Chiara, 2020. "Learning and payoff externalities in an investment game," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 234-250.
    14. Moisson, Paul-Henri, 2024. "Meritocracy and Inequality," TSE Working Papers 24-1518, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2024.
    15. Kartal, Melis & Tremewan, James, 2018. "An offer you can refuse: The effect of transparency with endogenous conflict of interest," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 44-55.
    16. Bergh, Andreas & Fink, Günther, 2009. "Higher education, elite institutions and inequality," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 376-384, April.
    17. Daniel Gottlieb & Kent Smetters, 2011. "Grade Non-Disclosure," NBER Working Papers 17465, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Iñaki Aguirre, 1999. "Information transmission and incentives not to price discriminate," Spanish Economic Review, Springer;Spanish Economic Association, vol. 1(3), pages 283-299.
    19. Daley, Brendan & Schwarz, Michael & Sonin, Konstantin, 2012. "Efficient investment in a dynamic auction environment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 104-119.
    20. Yi Qian & Qiang Gong & Yuxin Chen, 2015. "Untangling Searchable and Experiential Quality Responses to Counterfeits," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(4), pages 522-538, July.

    More about this item

    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:wly:soecon:v:67:y:2000:i:1:p:139-154. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)2325-8012 .

    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.