IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ulp/sbbeta/2016-20.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Playing the game the others want to play: Keynes’ beauty contest revisited

Author

Listed:
  • Camille Cornand
  • Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira

Abstract

In Keynes’ beauty contest, agents make choices by referring to their expectations of some fundamental value and of the conventional value to be set by the market. In doing so, agents respond to fundamental and strategic motives, respectively. The prevalence of either motive is usually set exogenously. Our contribution is to consider whether agents favor one of the two motives when the relative weights put on them are taken as strategic variables. We show that the strategic motive tends to prevail over the fundamental one, yielding a disconnection of agents’ actions from the fundamental. This is done in a simple valuation game emphasizing the role of public information. We then extend the same result to competition between the owners of two firms, by using a delegation game in which informational issues are embedded into a broader microfounded setting.

Suggested Citation

  • Camille Cornand & Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira, 2016. "Playing the game the others want to play: Keynes’ beauty contest revisited," Working Papers of BETA 2016-20, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    • Handle: RePEc:ulp:sbbeta:2016-20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://beta.u-strasbg.fr/WP/2016/2016-20.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martimort, David & Stole, Lars, 2011. "Aggregate Representations of Aggregate Games," MPRA Paper 32871, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    2. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2008. "Optimal Degree of Public Information Dissemination," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 718-742, April.
    3. George-Marios Angeletos & Alessandro Pavan, 2007. "Efficient Use of Information and Social Value of Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(4), pages 1103-1142, July.
    4. George-Marios Angeletos & Guido Lorenzoni & Alessandro Pavan, 2010. "Beauty Contests and Irrational Exuberance: A Neoclassical Approach," NBER Working Papers 15883, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. d'Aspremont, Claude & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2009. "Price-quantity competition with varying toughness," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 62-82, January.
    6. David P. Myatt & Chris Wallace, 2012. "Endogenous Information Acquisition in Coordination Games," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 79(1), pages 340-374.
    7. Bresnahan, Timothy F., 1989. "Empirical studies of industries with market power," Handbook of Industrial Organization, in: R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), Handbook of Industrial Organization, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 17, pages 1011-1057, Elsevier.
    8. Camille Cornand & Frank Heinemann, 2008. "Optimal Degree of Public Information Dissemination," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 718-742, April.
    9. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1.
    10. Nicky J. Welton & Howard H. Z. Thom, 2015. "Value of Information," Medical Decision Making, , vol. 35(5), pages 564-566, July.
    11. Miller, Nolan H & Pazgal, Amit I, 2001. "The Equivalence of Price and Quantity Competition with Delegation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 284-301, Summer.
    12. Nirvikar Singh & Xavier Vives, 1984. "Price and Quantity Competition in a Differentiated Duopoly," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 15(4), pages 546-554, Winter.
    13. Stephen Morris & Hyun Song Shin, 2002. "Social Value of Public Information," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1521-1534, December.
    14. R. Schmalensee & R. Willig (ed.), 1989. "Handbook of Industrial Organization," Handbook of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2.
    15. Myatt, David P. & Wallace, Chris, 2015. "Cournot competition and the social value of information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 466-506.
    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. Cornand, Camille & Dos Santos Ferreira, Rodolphe, 2020. "Cooperation in a differentiated duopoly when information is dispersed: A beauty contest game with endogenous concern for coordination," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 101-111.
    2. Camille Cornand & Rodolphe dos Santos Ferreira, 2017. "The social value of information and the competition motive: Price vs. quantity games," Working Papers halshs-01614815, HAL.
    3. Camille Cornand & Rodolphe Dos Santos Ferreira, 2020. "The social value of information and the competition motive: price versus quantity games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(4), pages 1101-1137, November.
    4. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Optimal and Robust Disclosure of Public Information," Papers 2203.16809, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    5. Stephanie L. Chan, 2021. "The Social Value of Public Information When Not Everyone is Privately Informed," Working Papers 2021-09-18, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    6. Arato, Hiroki & Hori, Takeo & Nakamura, Tomoya, 2021. "Endogenous information acquisition and the partial announcement policy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    7. Takashi Ui, 2022. "Optimal and Robust Disclosure of Public Information," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 039, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    8. Claude, DASPREMONT & Rodolphe, DOS SANTOS FERREIRA & Jacques, THEPOT, 2007. "Hawks and doves in segmented markets : a formal approach to competitive aggressiveness," Discussion Papers (ECON - Département des Sciences Economiques) 2007039, Université catholique de Louvain, Département des Sciences Economiques.
    9. Romain Baeriswyl & Camille Cornand & Bruno Ziliotto, 2020. "Observing and Shaping the Market: The Dilemma of Central Banks," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 52(8), pages 1973-2005, December.
    10. Hiroki Arato & Tomoya Nakamura, 2013. "Endogenous Alleviation of Overreaction Problem by Aggregate Information Announcement," The Japanese Economic Review, Japanese Economic Association, vol. 64(3), pages 319-336, September.
    11. Ui, Takashi & 宇井, 貴志, 2014. "The Social Value of Public Information with Convex Costs of Information Acquisition," Discussion Papers 2014-05, Graduate School of Economics, Hitotsubashi University.
    12. Pavan, Alessandro & Vives, Xavier, 2015. "Information, Coordination, and Market Frictions: An Introduction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 407-426.
    13. Rigos, Alexandros, 2022. "The normality assumption in coordination games with flexible information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    14. Ui, Takashi & Yoshizawa, Yasunori, 2015. "Characterizing social value of information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 158(PB), pages 507-535.
    15. Chen, Heng & Luo, Yulei & Pei, Guangyu, 2015. "Attention misallocation, social welfare and policy implications," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 37-57.
    16. Chen, Heng & Luo, Yulei & Pei, Guangyu, 2014. "Too Much of a Good Thing: Attention Misallocation and Social Welfare in Coordination Games," MPRA Paper 59139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    17. Antonio Jiménez-Martínez, 2014. "Information acquisition interactions in two-player quadratic games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(2), pages 455-485, May.
    18. Cumbul, Eray, 2021. "Stackelberg versus Cournot oligopoly with private information," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    19. Myatt, David P. & Wallace, Chris, 2014. "Central bank communication design in a Lucas-Phelps economy," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 64-79.
    20. Leister, C. Matthew, 2020. "Information acquisition and welfare in network games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 453-475.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    beauty contest; dispersed information; public signals; coordination; competition.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • E12 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - General Aggregative Models - - - Keynes; Keynesian; Post-Keynesian; Modern Monetary Theory
    • E44 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Money and Interest Rates - - - Financial Markets and the Macroeconomy
    • 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:ulp:sbbeta:2016-20. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bestrfr.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.