IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2202.05249.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Buying Opinions

Author

Listed:
  • Mark Whitmeyer
  • Kun Zhang

Abstract

A principal hires an agent to acquire soft information about an unknown state. Even though neither how the agent learns nor what the agent discovers are contractible, we show the principal is unconstrained as to what information the agent can be induced to acquire and report honestly. When the agent is risk neutral, and a) is not asked to learn too much, b) can acquire information sufficiently cheaply, or c) can face sufficiently large penalties, the principal can attain the first-best outcome. We discuss the effect of risk aversion (on the part of the agent) and characterize the second-best contracts.

Suggested Citation

  • Mark Whitmeyer & Kun Zhang, 2022. "Buying Opinions," Papers 2202.05249, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2023.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2202.05249
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2202.05249
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Luciano Pomatto & Philipp Strack & Omer Tamuz, 2018. "The Cost of Information: The Case of Constant Marginal Costs," Papers 1812.04211, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2023.
    2. Azrieli, Yaron, 2021. "Monitoring experts," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(4), November.
    3. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    4. J. A. Mirrlees, 1999. "The Theory of Moral Hazard and Unobservable Behaviour: Part I," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 3-21.
    5. Karl Schlag & James Tremewan & Joël Weele, 2015. "A penny for your thoughts: a survey of methods for eliciting beliefs," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(3), pages 457-490, September.
    6. 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.
    7. Osband, Kent, 1989. "Optimal Forecasting Incentives," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(5), pages 1091-1112, October.
    8. Richard A. Lambert, 1986. "Executive Effort and Selection of Risky Projects," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 77-88, Spring.
    9. Gneiting, Tilmann & Raftery, Adrian E., 2007. "Strictly Proper Scoring Rules, Prediction, and Estimation," Journal of the American Statistical Association, American Statistical Association, vol. 102, pages 359-378, March.
    10. Aubrey Clark & Giovanni Reggiani, 2021. "Contracts for acquiring information," Papers 2103.03911, arXiv.org.
    11. Carroll, Gabriel, 2019. "Robust incentives for information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 382-420.
    12. Sims, Christopher A., 2003. "Implications of rational inattention," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 665-690, April.
    13. Chade, Hector & Kovrijnykh, Natalia, 2016. "Delegated information acquisition with moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 55-92.
    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. Tsakas, Elias, 2018. "Robust scoring rules," Research Memorandum 023, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    2. Tsakas, Elias, 2020. "Robust scoring rules," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(3), July.
    3. Lindbeck, Assar & Weibull, Jörgen, 2020. "Delegation of investment decisions, and optimal remuneration of agents," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 129(C).
    4. 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.
    5. Roc Armenter & Michèle Müller-Itten & Zachary Stangebye, 2020. "Rational Inattention via Ignorance Equivalence," Working Papers 20-24, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    6. Azrieli, Yaron, 2022. "Delegated expertise: Implementability with peer-monitoring," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 240-254.
    7. Eyting, Markus & Schmidt, Patrick, 2021. "Belief elicitation with multiple point predictions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    8. Larionov, Daniil & Pham, Hien & Yamashita, Takuro & Zhu, Shuguang, 2021. "First Best Implementation with Costly Information Acquisition," TSE Working Papers 21-1261, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE), revised Apr 2022.
    9. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Dewan, Ambuj & Neligh, Nathaniel, 2020. "Estimating information cost functions in models of rational inattention," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    11. David Walker-Jones, 2019. "Rational Inattention and Perceptual Distance," Papers 1909.00888, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2019.
    12. Malcomson James M, 2009. "Principal and Expert Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, May.
    13. Roc Armenter & Michèle Müller-Itten & Zachary Strangebye, 2021. "Geometric Methods for Finite Rational Inattention," Working Papers 21-30, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    14. Caplin, Andrew, 2014. "Rational inattention and revealed preference: The data-theoretic approach to economic modeling," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(4), pages 295-305.
    15. Mensch, Jeffrey, 2021. "Rational inattention and the monotone likelihood ratio property," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    16. Matysková, Ludmila & Montes, Alfonso, 2023. "Bayesian persuasion with costly information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 211(C).
    17. Flynn, Joel P. & Sastry, Karthik A., 2023. "Strategic mistakes," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 212(C).
    18. Choi, Jin Hyuk & Han, Kookyoung, 2020. "Optimal contract for outsourcing information acquisition," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 195(C).
    19. Li, Anqi & Hu, Lin, 2023. "Electoral accountability and selection with personalized information aggregation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 296-315.
    20. Andrew Caplin & Mark Dean, 2013. "Behavioral Implications of Rational Inattention with Shannon Entropy," NBER Working Papers 19318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2202.05249. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.