Opinions as incentives

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Opinions as incentives

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Yeon-Koo Che () (Department of Economics, Columbia University)
Navin Karthik (University of California, San Diego)

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Yeon-Koo Che

Abstract

We study a model where a decision maker (DM) must select an adviser to advise her about an unknown state of the world. There is a pool of available advisers who all have the same underlying preferences as the DM; they differ, however, in their prior beliefs about the state, which we interpret as differences of opinion. We derive a tradeoff faced by the DM: an adviser with a greater difference of opinion has greater incentives to acquire information, but reveals less of any information she acquires, via strategic disclosure. Nevertheless, it is optimal to choose an adviser with at least some difference of opinion. The analysis reveals two novel incentives for an agent to acquire information: a "persuasion" motive and a motive to "avoid prejudice." Delegation is costly for the DM because it eliminates both of these incentives. We also study the relationship between difference of opinion and difference of preference.

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Paper provided by Columbia University, Department of Economics in its series Discussion Papers with number 0708-09.

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Length: 45 pages
Date of creation: 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:clu:wpaper:0708-09

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Paper
- Che, Yeon-Koo & Kartik, Navin, 2006. "Opinion as Incentives," MPRA Paper 6094, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 15 Nov 2007. [Downloadable!]

This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

NEP-ALL-2008-02-02 (All new papers)

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:

Hao Li, 2001. "A Theory of Conservatism," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(3), pages 617-636, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
Hao Li & Wing Suen, 2004. "Delegating Decisions to Experts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(S1), pages S311-S335, February. [Downloadable!] (restricted)

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Mariagiovanna Baccara & Leeat Yariv, 2008. "Similarity and Polarization in Groups," Working Papers 08-27, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]

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This page was last updated on 2009-11-16.

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