IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/tor/tecipa/tecipa-607.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Attention and Selection Effects

Author

Listed:
  • Sandro Ambuehl
  • Axel Ockenfels
  • Colin Stewart

Abstract

Who participates in transactions when information about the consequences must be learned? We show theoretically that decision makers for whom acquiring and processing information is more costly not only respond more strongly to changes in incentive payments for participating but also decide to participate based on worse information. With higher payments, the pool of participants consists of a larger proportion of individuals who have a worse understanding of the consequences of their decision. We conduct a behavioral experiment that confirms these predictions, both for experimental variation in the costs of information acquisition and for various measures of information costs, including school grades and cognitive ability. These findings are relevant for any transaction combining a payment for participation with uncertain yet learnable consequences.

Suggested Citation

  • Sandro Ambuehl & Axel Ockenfels & Colin Stewart, 2018. "Attention and Selection Effects," Working Papers tecipa-607, University of Toronto, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:tor:tecipa:tecipa-607
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.economics.utoronto.ca/public/workingPapers/tecipa-607.pdf
    File Function: Main Text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert J. Aumann, 1995. "Repeated Games with Incomplete Information," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262011476, April.
    2. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    3. Filip Matêjka & Alisdair McKay, 2015. "Rational Inattention to Discrete Choices: A New Foundation for the Multinomial Logit Model," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(1), pages 272-298, January.
    4. Andrew Caplin & Mark Dean & John Leahy, 2022. "Rationally Inattentive Behavior: Characterizing and Generalizing Shannon Entropy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 130(6), pages 1676-1715.
    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. Roman Inderst & Kiryl Khalmetski & Axel Ockenfels, 2019. "Sharing Guilt: How Better Access to Information May Backfire," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 3322-3336, July.
    2. Erin T. Bronchetti & Judd B. Kessler & Ellen B. Magenheim & Dmitry Taubinsky & Eric Zwick, 2020. "Is Attention Produced Rationally?," Working Papers 2020-91, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    3. Erin T. Bronchetti & Judd B. Kessler & Ellen B. Magenheim & Dmitry Taubinsky & Eric Zwick, 2023. "Is Attention Produced Optimally? Theory and Evidence From Experiments With Bandwidth Enhancements," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 91(2), pages 669-707, March.
    4. Martin, Daniel & Muñoz-Rodriguez, Edwin, 2022. "Cognitive costs and misperceived incentives: Evidence from the BDM mechanism," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 148(C).

    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. Sandro Ambuehl & Axel Ockenfels & Colin Stewart, 2018. "Who Opts In?," CESifo Working Paper Series 7091, CESifo.
    2. Tsakas, Elias, 2020. "Robust scoring rules," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    3. Bartosz Maćkowiak & Filip Matějka & Mirko Wiederholt, 2023. "Rational Inattention: A Review," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 61(1), pages 226-273, March.
    4. Benjamin Hébert & Michael Woodford, 2017. "Rational Inattention and Sequential Information Sampling," NBER Working Papers 23787, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Matysková, Ludmila & Montes, Alfonso, 2023. "Bayesian persuasion with costly information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    6. Tsakas, Elias, 2018. "Robust scoring rules," Research Memorandum 023, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    7. Han Wang, 2023. "Contracting with Heterogeneous Researchers," Papers 2307.07629, arXiv.org.
    8. Matějka, Filip & Mackowiak, Bartosz & Wiederholt, Mirko, 2018. "Survey: Rational Inattention, a Disciplined Behavioral Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 13243, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Wei, Dong, 2021. "Persuasion under costly learning," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    10. Le Treust, Maël & Tomala, Tristan, 2019. "Persuasion with limited communication capacity," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    11. Jeong Ho (John) Kim & Kyungmin Kim & Marilyn Pease, 2024. "Unemployment Duration Under Flexible Information Acquisition," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 65(1), pages 471-503, February.
    12. Koessler, Frederic & Laclau, Marie & Renault, Jérôme & Tomala, Tristan, 2022. "Long information design," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(2), May.
    13. Philippe Jehiel & Jakub Steiner, 2020. "Selective Sampling with Information-Storage Constraints [On interim rationality, belief formation and learning in decision problems with bounded memory]," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 130(630), pages 1753-1781.
    14. Dirk Bergemann & Stephen Morris, 2019. "Information Design: A Unified Perspective," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 57(1), pages 44-95, March.
    15. Alp Atakan & Mehmet Ekmekci & Ludovic Renou, 2021. "Cross-verification and Persuasive Cheap Talk," Papers 2102.13562, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2021.
    16. Thomas Mariotti & Nikolaus Schweizer & Nora Szech & Jonas von Wangenheim, 2023. "Information Nudges and Self-Control," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(4), pages 2182-2197, April.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2015. "The Limits of Price Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 921-957, March.
    18. Shota Ichihashi & Alex Smolin, 2022. "Data Provision to an Informed Seller," Papers 2204.08723, arXiv.org, revised Mar 2023.
    19. Tommaso Denti & Doron Ravid, 2023. "Robust Predictions in Games with Rational Inattention," Papers 2306.09964, arXiv.org.
    20. Emerson Melo, 2022. "On the Distributional Robustness of Finite Rational Inattention Models," Papers 2208.03370, arXiv.org, revised May 2023.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Experiment; rational inattention; repugnant transactions; incentives;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D91 - Microeconomics - - Micro-Based Behavioral Economics - - - Role and Effects of Psychological, Emotional, Social, and Cognitive Factors on Decision Making
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior

    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:tor:tecipa:tecipa-607. 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: RePEc Maintainer (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.