IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/crd/wpaper/09008.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Credibility for Sale: the Effect of Disclosure on Information Acquisition and Transmission

Author

Abstract

We study the effect of disclosure on information acquisition and transmission in a dynamic reputation model. In each period, to make a report to a client, an expert chooses between conducting a costly investigation or channeling a message from an interest group. We show that not disclosing the source of the expert's report may increase the frequency of investigation by the expert. Nevertheless, it decreases the quality of the clients' decisions. We demonstrate that, however, when the importance of decisions vary across time, when the interest groups are long-lived, or when the expert's clientele is growing in her reputation, nondisclosure may improve the quality of the clients' decisions.

Suggested Citation

  • Li, Ming & Tymofiy Mylovanov, 2009. "Credibility for Sale: the Effect of Disclosure on Information Acquisition and Transmission," Working Papers 09008, Concordia University, Department of Economics, revised Oct 2009.
    • Handle: RePEc:crd:wpaper:09008
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gabszewicz, Jean J. & Laussel, Dider & Sonnac, Nathalie, 2001. "Press advertising and the ascent of the 'Pensee Unique'," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 641-651, May.
    2. Mark Armstrong, 2006. "Competition in two‐sided markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 668-691, September.
    3. Jean‐Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Two‐sided markets: a progress report," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 645-667, September.
    4. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    5. Wrasai, Phongthorn & Swank, Otto H., 2007. "Policy makers, advisers, and reputation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 62(4), pages 579-590, April.
    6. Stephen Morris, 2001. "Political Correctness," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 231-265, April.
    7. Martin W. Cripps & George J. Mailath & Larry Samuelson, 2004. "Imperfect Monitoring and Impermanent Reputations," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(2), pages 407-432, March.
    8. Roland Benabou & Guy Laroque, 1992. "Using Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 921-958.
    9. Esther Gal‐Or & Anthony Dukes, 2003. "Minimum Differentiation in Commercial Media Markets," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(3), pages 291-325, September.
    10. Bourjade, Sylvain & Jullien, Bruno, 2004. "Expertise and Bias in Decision Making," MPRA Paper 7251, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Jan 2007.
    11. Anderson, Simon P. & Gabszewicz, Jean J., 2006. "The Media and Advertising: A Tale of Two-Sided Markets," Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, in: V.A. Ginsburgh & D. Throsby (ed.), Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 18, pages 567-614, Elsevier.
    12. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
    13. Dino Gerardi & Leeat Yariv, 2008. "Costly Expertise," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 187-193, May.
    14. Matthew Ellman & Fabrizio Germano, "undated". "What Do the Papers Sell?," Working Papers 149, Barcelona School of Economics.
    15. Peitz, Martin & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2008. "Content and advertising in the media: Pay-tv versus free-to-air," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 949-965, July.
    16. Simon P. Anderson & John McLaren, 2012. "Media Mergers And Media Bias With Rational Consumers," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 831-859, August.
    17. repec:ner:ucllon:http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/17678/ is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Victor Ginsburgh & David Throsby, 2006. "Handbook of the economics of art and culture," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/1673, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    19. Timothy Besley & Andrea Prat, 2006. "Handcuffs for the Grabbing Hand? Media Capture and Government Accountability," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 720-736, June.
    20. Kreps, David M. & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Reputation and imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 253-279, August.
    21. Sendhil Mullainathan & Andrei Shleifer, 2005. "The Market for News," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 1031-1053, September.
    22. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "Professional advice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 120-142, January.
    23. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Predation, reputation, and entry deterrence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 280-312, August.
    24. Olszewski, Wojciech, 2004. "Informal communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 180-200, August.
    25. Choi, Jay Pil, 2006. "Broadcast competition and advertising with free entry: Subscription vs. free-to-air," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 181-196, June.
    26. Phelan, Christopher, 2006. "Public trust and government betrayal," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 130(1), pages 27-43, September.
    27. Mariano, Beatriz, 2008. "Do reputational concerns lead to reliable ratings?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 24433, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    28. Joel Sobel, 1985. "A Theory of Credibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 557-573.
    29. In-Uck Park, 2005. "Cheap-Talk Referrals of Differentiated Experts in Repeated Relationships," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(2), pages 391-411, Summer.
    30. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2006. "Repeated Games and Reputations: Long-Run Relationships," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195300796.
    31. Jeong-Yoo Kim, 1996. "Cheap Talk and Reputation in Repeated Pretrial Negotiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(4), pages 787-802, Winter.
    32. Jean-Charles Rochet Author-Email:rochet@cict.fr Author-Workplace-Name: IDEI, University of Toulouse & Jean Tirole Author-Email: tirole@cict.fr Author-Workplace-Name: IDEI, University of Toulouse, 2006. "Two-Sided Markets: A Progress Report," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 645-667, Autumn.
    33. Mark Armstrong Author-Email: mark.armstrong@ucl.ac.uk Author-Workplace-Name: University College of London, 2006. "Competition in Two-Sided Markets," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 668-691, Autumn.
    34. Wei Li, 2007. "Changing One's Mind when the Facts Change: Incentives of Experts and the Design of Reporting Protocols," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(4), pages 1175-1194.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Wei Li, 2010. "Peddling Influence through Intermediaries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1136-1162, June.

    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. Petrova, Maria, 2012. "Mass media and special interest groups," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 17-38.
    2. Maria Battaggion & Alessandro Vaglio, 2015. "Watchdogs, Platforms and Audience: An Economic Perspective on Media Markets," Atlantic Economic Journal, Springer;International Atlantic Economic Society, vol. 43(2), pages 209-228, June.
    3. Marco Antonielli & Lapo Filistrucchi, 2011. "Collusion and the political differentiation of newspapers," Working Papers 11-26, NET Institute, revised Nov 2011.
    4. Bruno Jullien & In-Uck Park, 2009. "Seller Reputation and Trust in Pre-Trade Communication," Levine's Working Paper Archive 814577000000000330, David K. Levine.
    5. Peitz, Martin & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2008. "Content and advertising in the media: Pay-tv versus free-to-air," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 26(4), pages 949-965, July.
    6. Simon P. Anderson & Joshua S. Gans, 2011. "Platform Siphoning: Ad-Avoidance and Media Content," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 1-34, November.
    7. Blasco, Andrea & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2012. "Competition and commercial media bias," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(5), pages 434-447.
    8. Behringer, Stefan & Filistrucchi, Lapo, 2015. "Hotelling competition and political differentiation with more than two newspapers," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 36-49.
    9. Miriam Schütte & Philipp Christoph Wichardt, 2013. "Delegation and Interim Performance Evaluation," CESifo Working Paper Series 4193, CESifo.
    10. Anna D'Annunzio, 2013. "Vertical Integration in Two-Sided Markets: Exclusive Provision and Program Quality," DIAG Technical Reports 2013-16, Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering, Universita' degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza".
    11. Claude Crampes & Carole Haritchabalet & Bruno Jullien, 2009. "Advertising, Competition And Entry In Media Industries," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(1), pages 7-31, March.
    12. Doh-Shin Jeon & Nikrooz Nasr, 2016. "News Aggregators and Competition among Newspapers on the Internet," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 91-114, November.
    13. Schottmüller, Christoph, 2019. "Too good to be truthful: Why competent advisers are fired," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 333-360.
    14. Charles Angelucci & Julia Cagé, 2019. "Newspapers in Times of Low Advertising Revenues," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 319-364, August.
    15. Junghun Cho, 2006. "Multiple Advisors with Reputation," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp314, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    16. Monic Sun & Feng Zhu, 2011. "Ad Revenue and Content Commercialization: Evidence from Blogs," Working Papers 11-32, NET Institute.
    17. Ascensión Andina-Díaz, 2015. "Competition and uncertainty in a paper’s news desk," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 116(1), pages 77-93, September.
    18. Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse M. Shapiro, 2006. "Media Bias and Reputation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(2), pages 280-316, April.
    19. von Ehrlich, Maximilian & Greiner, Tanja, 2013. "The role of online platforms for media markets — Two-dimensional spatial competition in a two-sided market," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 723-737.
    20. Reisinger, Markus, 2012. "Platform competition for advertisers and users in media markets," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 30(2), pages 243-252.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    information acquisition; information transmission; reputation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:crd:wpaper:09008. 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: Economics Department (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deconca.html .

    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.