IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed012/1142.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Coarse Information and Entrepreneurial Risk Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Pierre-Yves Yanni

    (UQAM)

Abstract

I analyze a model of anonymous credit markets with adverse selection and moral hazard in which investors finance entrepreneurs and only observe whether they have defaulted in the past. There is a dynamic complementarity in risk choice: incentives to choose the safe project over the risky project in the current period are stronger if other entrepreneurs ran safe projects in the past and if they are expected to run safe projects in the future. This results in multiple equilibria that depend on agents' expectations but also on history. I show that reputation concerns can induce entrepreneurs to be too conservative. In this case the economy converges to an inefficient equilibrium in which entrepreneurs choose safe projects over risky ones despite their lower return. A transition to the socially optimal risky equilibrium can be implemented in a way that balances the budget and is Pareto improving.

Suggested Citation

  • Pierre-Yves Yanni, 2012. "Coarse Information and Entrepreneurial Risk Choice," 2012 Meeting Papers 1142, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed012:1142
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2012/paper_1142.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Meyer, Margaret A & Vickers, John, 1997. "Performance Comparisons and Dynamic Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(3), pages 547-581, June.
    2. Ely, Jeffrey & Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 2008. "When is reputation bad?," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 498-526, July.
    3. Jeffrey C. Ely & Juuso Välimäki, 2003. "Bad Reputation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 785-814.
    4. Levin Jonathan, 2009. "The Dynamics of Collective Reputation," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-25, August.
    5. Scharfstein, David S. & Gromb, Denis, 2002. "Entrepreneurship in Equilibrium," CEPR Discussion Papers 3652, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    6. Simon Board & Moritz Meyer‐ter‐Vehn, 2013. "Reputation for Quality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2381-2462, November.
    7. Jappelli, Tullio & Pagano, Marco, 2002. "Information sharing, lending and defaults: Cross-country evidence," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 26(10), pages 2017-2045, October.
    8. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    9. Bengt Holmström, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 169-182.
    10. Jean Tirole, 1996. "A Theory of Collective Reputations (with applications to the persistence of corruption and to firm quality)," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 63(1), pages 1-22.
    11. Diamond, Douglas W, 1989. "Reputation Acquisition in Debt Markets," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 828-862, August.
    12. Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1995. "Corporate Conservatism and Relative Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25, February.
    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. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    2. Dasgupta, Amil & Sarafidis, Yianis, 2009. "Managers as administrators: Reputation and incentives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 155-163, May.
    3. Caruana, Guillermo, 2001. "Career concerns and contingent compensation," UC3M Working papers. Economics we014811, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Departamento de Economía.
    4. Englmaier, Florian & Filipi, Ales & Singh, Ravi, 2010. "Incentives, reputation and the allocation of authority," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 413-427, November.
    5. Jeffrey C. Ely & Juuso Välimäki, 2003. "Bad Reputation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 785-814.
    6. Alessandro Bonatti & Johannes Horner, 2011. "Career Concerns with Coarse Information," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1831, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Jan 2012.
    7. Serfling, Matthew A., 2014. "CEO age and the riskiness of corporate policies," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 25(C), pages 251-273.
    8. Judith Chevalier & Glenn Ellison, 1999. "Career Concerns of Mutual Fund Managers," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 389-432.
    9. 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.
    10. Clarke, Jonathan & Subramanian, Ajay, 2006. "Dynamic forecasting behavior by analysts: Theory and evidence," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 81-113, April.
    11. Citci, Sadettin Haluk & Inci, Eren, 2016. "The masquerade ball of the CEOs and the mask of excessive risk," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 383-393.
    12. Kawai, Keiichi, 2015. "Reputation for quality and adverse selection," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 47-59.
    13. Hui Liang James, 2020. "CEO age and tax planning," Review of Financial Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(2), pages 275-299, April.
    14. Michael Junho Lee & Daniel Neuhann, 2019. "A Dynamic Theory of Collateral Quality and Long-Term Interventions," Staff Reports 894, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
    15. Hari P. Adhikari & Marcin W. Krolikowski & James Malm & Nilesh B. Sah, 2021. "Working capital (mis)management – impact of executive age," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 61(1), pages 727-761, March.
    16. Mailath, George J. & Samuelson, Larry, 2015. "Reputations in Repeated Games," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    17. Damien S Eldridge, 2007. "A Shirking Theory of Referrals," Working Papers 2007.05, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    18. Ghosh, Saptarshi P. & Roy, Jaideep, 2015. "Committees with leaks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 207-214.
    19. Khanna, Naveen & Mathews, Richmond D., 2022. "Skill versus reliability in venture capital," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 41-63.
    20. Heski Bar-Isaac, 2004. "Something to Prove: Reputation in teams and hiring to introduce uncertainty," Working Papers 04-07, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Lists

    This item is featured on the following reading lists, Wikipedia, or ReplicationWiki pages:
    1. Canadian Macro Study Group

    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:red:sed012:1142. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.