IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/7443.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Paradox of Credibility

Author

Listed:
  • Jung, Hanjoon Michael

Abstract

In an information transmission situation, a sender's concern for its credibility could endow itself with an invisible power to control the receiver's decisions so that the sender can manipulate information without being detected. In this case, the sender can achieve its favored outcome without losing its credibility, which stays true even when the sender and the receiver have contradictory preferences. Therefore, the sender's concern for its credibility could result in less truthful signals from the sender and worse payoffs to the receiver. This is the paradox of credibility. This paper models this paradoxical role of the sender's credibility concern.

Suggested Citation

  • Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2008. "Paradox of Credibility," MPRA Paper 7443, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:7443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/7443/1/MPRA_paper_7443.pdf
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-89-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Ying Chen & Navin Kartik & Joel Sobel, 2008. "Selecting Cheap-Talk Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(1), pages 117-136, January.
    3. Austen-Smith, David, 1994. "Strategic Transmission of Costly Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(4), pages 955-963, July.
    4. 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.
    5. Farrell Joseph, 1993. "Meaning and Credibility in Cheap-Talk Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 514-531, October.
    6. Daniel J. Seidmann & Eyal Winter, 1997. "Strategic Information Transmission with Verifiable Messages," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(1), pages 163-170, January.
    7. Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2007. "Strategic Information Transmission through the Media," MPRA Paper 5556, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2007.
    8. Farrell, Joseph & Gibbons, Robert, 1989. "Cheap Talk with Two Audiences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1214-1223, December.
    9. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    10. Hammad Siddiqi, 2007. "Stock Price Manipulation : The Role of Intermediaries," Finance Working Papers 22280, East Asian Bureau of Economic Research.
    11. Kartik, Navin & Ottaviani, Marco & Squintani, Francesco, 2007. "Credulity, lies, and costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 134(1), pages 93-116, May.
    12. Joseph Farrell & Matthew Rabin, 1996. "Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 103-118, Summer.
    13. Joel Sobel, 1985. "A Theory of Credibility," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 52(4), pages 557-573.
    14. 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.
    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. Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2009. "Who benefits from a sender's credibility concern, the sender or a receiver?," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 105(3), pages 204-207, December.
    2. Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2007. "Strategic Information Transmission through the Media," MPRA Paper 5556, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Oct 2007.
    3. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    4. Venkatesh, Raghul S, 2017. "Cheap Talk with Strategic Substitutability," CRETA Online Discussion Paper Series 31, Centre for Research in Economic Theory and its Applications CRETA.
    5. Vincent P. Crawford, 2003. "Lying for Strategic Advantage: Rational and Boundedly Rational Misrepresentation of Intentions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 133-149, March.
    6. Ivan Balbuzanov, 2019. "Lies and consequences," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(4), pages 1203-1240, December.
    7. Stefano Demichelis & Jorgen W. Weibull, 2008. "Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1292-1311, September.
    8. Murali Agastya & Parimal Kanti Bag & Indranil Chakraborty, 2014. "Communication and authority with a partially informed expert," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 45(1), pages 176-197, March.
    9. Li, Ming & Madarász, Kristóf, 2008. "When mandatory disclosure hurts: Expert advice and conflicting interests," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 139(1), pages 47-74, March.
    10. Edoardo Grillo, 2014. "Reference Dependence and Politicians' Credibility," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 353, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    11. Kim, Kyungmin & Pogach, Jonathan, 2014. "Honesty vs. advocacy," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 51-74.
    12. Serra Garcia, M. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Potters, J.J.M., 2010. "Which Words Bond? An Experiment on Signaling in a Public Good Game (replaced by CentER DP 2011-139)," Discussion Paper 2010-33, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    13. Johanna Hertel & John Smith, 2013. "Not so cheap talk: costly and discrete communication," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(2), pages 267-291, August.
    14. Pei, Harry, 2023. "Repeated communication with private lying costs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 210(C).
    15. Grillo, Edoardo, 2016. "The hidden cost of raising voters’ expectations: Reference dependence and politicians’ credibility," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 126-143.
    16. Edoardo Grillo, 2013. "Reference Dependence, Risky Projects and Credible Information Transmission," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 331, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    17. Miura, Shintaro & Yamashita, Takuro, 2018. "Divergent Interpretation and Divergent Prediction in Communication," TSE Working Papers 18-939, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    18. Patrick Hummel & John Morgan & Phillip C. Stocken, 2013. "A model of flops," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 585-609, December.
    19. Chen, Ying, 2011. "Perturbed communication games with honest senders and naive receivers," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 401-424, March.
    20. Golosov, Mikhail & Skreta, Vasiliki & Tsyvinski, Aleh & Wilson, Andrea, 2014. "Dynamic strategic information transmission," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 304-341.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Anti-coordination game; Credibility; Information Transmission; Hawk-Dove game; Paradox;
    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
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:pra:mprapa:7443. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.