IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/inn/wpaper/2014-03.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How the Value of Information Shapes the Value of Commitment Or: Why the Value of Commitment Does Not Vanish

Author

Listed:
  • Tanja Hörtnagl
  • Rudolf Kerschbamer

Abstract

This paper challenges recent results on the fragility of the value of commitment. It introduces a specific notion of the 'value of information' for a later-moving player about the action choice of a previously-moving player, gives conditions under which this value is positive and shows that a positive value of information for the latermoving player is sufficient for a positive value of commitment for the previouslymoving player. It then argues that the value of information for a later-moving player is unlikely to vanish in real-world applications, implying that the value of commitment for the previously-moving player does not vanish either.

Suggested Citation

  • Tanja Hörtnagl & Rudolf Kerschbamer, 2014. "How the Value of Information Shapes the Value of Commitment Or: Why the Value of Commitment Does Not Vanish," Working Papers 2014-03, Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck.
    • Handle: RePEc:inn:wpaper:2014-03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2014-03.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Showalter, Dean M, 1995. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: Comment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(3), pages 647-653, June.
    2. Bagwell, Kyle, 1995. "Commitment and observability in games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 8(2), pages 271-280.
    3. Sven Fischer & Werner Güth & Wieland Müller & Andreas Stiehler, 2006. "From ultimatum to Nash bargaining: Theory and experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(1), pages 17-33, April.
    4. Lehrer, Ehud & Rosenberg, Dinah, 2006. "What restrictions do Bayesian games impose on the value of information?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 343-357, June.
    5. Bolton, Patrick & Scharfstein, David S, 1990. "A Theory of Predation Based on Agency Problems in Financial Contracting," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(1), pages 93-106, March.
    6. Brander, James A. & Lewis, Tracy R., 1986. "Oligopoly and Financial Structure: The Limited Liability Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 76(5), pages 956-970, December.
    7. James A. Brander & Barbara J. Spencer, 1983. "Strategic Commitment with R&D: The Symmetric Case," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 225-235, Spring.
    8. Fudenberg, Drew & Tirole, Jean, 1984. "The Fat-Cat Effect, the Puppy-Dog Ploy, and the Lean and Hungry Look," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 74(2), pages 361-366, May.
    9. Guth, Werner & Kirchsteiger, Georg & Ritzberger, Klaus, 1998. "Imperfectly Observable Commitments inn-Player Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 54-74, April.
    10. Luca Lambertini & Gianpaolo Rossini, 1998. "Capital Commitment and Cournot Competition with Labour‐managed and Profit‐maximising Firms," Australian Economic Papers, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(1), pages 14-21, March.
    11. Morgan, John & Vardy, Felix, 2007. "The value of commitment in contests and tournaments when observation is costly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 326-338, August.
    12. Giovanni Maggi, 1999. "The Value of Commitment with Imperfect Observability and Private Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 30(4), pages 555-574, Winter.
    13. Economides, Nicholas, 1986. "Minimal and maximal product differentiation in Hotelling's duopoly," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 67-71.
    14. Fershtman, Chaim & Judd, Kenneth L, 1987. "Equilibrium Incentives in Oligopoly," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 77(5), pages 927-940, December.
    15. Fershtman, Chaim & Gneezy, Uri, 2001. "Strategic Delegation: An Experiment," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 352-368, Summer.
    16. Guth, Werner & Muller, Wieland & Spiegel, Yossi, 2006. "Noisy leadership: An experimental approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 37-62, October.
    17. Neyman, Abraham, 1991. "The positive value of information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 3(3), pages 350-355, August.
    18. Lehrer, Ehud & Rosenberg, Dinah, 2010. "A note on the evaluation of information in zero-sum repeated games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(4), pages 393-399, July.
    19. Kamien, Morton I. & Tauman, Yair & Zamir, Shmuel, 1990. "On the value of information in a strategic conflict," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 2(2), pages 129-153, June.
    20. Anders Poulsen & Odile Poulsen, 2008. "A note on commitment when there are errors in communication," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(74), pages 1-8.
    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. Michael Kopel & Clemens Löffler, 2008. "Commitment, first-mover-, and second-mover advantage," Journal of Economics, Springer, vol. 94(2), pages 143-166, July.
    2. Martin Kolmar & Andreas Wagener, 2013. "Inefficiency As A Strategic Device In Group Contests Against Dominant Opponents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2083-2095, October.
    3. Matthew J. Clayton, 1996. "Debt, Investment, and Product Market Competition," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 96-21, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    4. Matthew J. Clayton, 1999. "Debt, Investment, and Product Market Competition," New York University, Leonard N. Stern School Finance Department Working Paper Seires 99-056, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business-.
    5. Fershtman, Chaim & Kalai, Ehud, 1997. "Unobserved Delegation," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 38(4), pages 763-774, November.
    6. Anders Poulsen & Michael Roos, 2010. "Do people make strategic commitments? Experimental evidence on strategic information avoidance," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 13(2), pages 206-225, June.
    7. Guth, Werner & Muller, Wieland & Spiegel, Yossi, 2006. "Noisy leadership: An experimental approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 57(1), pages 37-62, October.
    8. Brishti Guha, 2017. "Costly Leader Games with a Probabilistically Non-Strategic Leader," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 19(02), pages 1-14, June.
    9. Anders U. Poulsen & Michael V. M. Roos, 2009. "Do People Make Strategic Moves? Experimental Evidence on Strategic Information Avoidance," Discussion Papers 09-06, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics.
    10. Spagnolo, Giancarlo, 1998. "Debt as a (Credible) Collusive Device, or: "Everybody Happy but the Consumer"," SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 243, Stockholm School of Economics, revised 01 Aug 2004.
    11. Bhaskar, V., 2009. "Commitment and observability in a contracting environment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 708-720, July.
    12. Aghion, Philippe & Dewatripont, Mathias & Legros, Patrick & Zingales, Luigi (ed.), 2016. "The Impact of Incomplete Contracts on Economics," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199826216.
    13. Poulsen, Anders, 2007. "Learning to Make Strategic Moves: Experimental Evidence," MPRA Paper 10927, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Giorgos Stamatopoulos, 2016. "Cournot and Stackelberg equilibrium under strategic delegation: an equivalence result," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 81(4), pages 553-570, November.
    15. Hughes, John S. & Kao, Jennifer L., 1997. "Strategic forward contracting and observability," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 121-133, November.
    16. Federico Etro, 2010. "Endogenous market structures and the optimal financial structure," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 43(4), pages 1333-1352, November.
    17. Federico Etro, 2010. "Endogenous Market Structures and Contract Theory," Working Papers 181, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised Mar 2010.
    18. Povel, Paul & Raith, Michael, 2004. "Financial constraints and product market competition: ex ante vs. ex post incentives," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 22(7), pages 917-949, September.
    19. Mitani, Hidetaka, 2014. "Capital structure and competitive position in product market," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 358-371.
    20. Giacinta Cestone, 1999. "Corporate Financing and Product Market Competition: An Overview," CSEF Working Papers 18, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Value of Information; Value of Commitment; Sequential Move Game; Imperfect Observability; Stackelberg Duopoly; First-Mover Advantage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • 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
    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:inn:wpaper:2014-03. 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: Judith Courian (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fuibkat.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.