IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oxf/wpaper/268.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Overconfidence: Constraints on Communication May Enhance Information Transmission

Author

Listed:
  • Kohei Kawamura

Abstract

This paper offers a simple but rich framework to study communication subject to various constraints such as anonymity requirements, equal treatment of multiple agents, overconfidence of an expert, and garbling, by extending the cheap talk model of Crawford and Sobel (1982). Common to these seemingly distinct types of constraints in communication is that the action by a decision maker is less sensitive to a message than without such constraints. Reduced sensitivity can alter the structure of informative equilibria dramatically, and leads to a type of informational distortion, termed incentives to exaggerate, which differs qualitatively from the well-known incentives to overstate/understate. We demonstrate that the two different types of distortion may partly offset each other, so the introduction of the costraints may be beneficial when the level to conflict between communicating parties is large. Our model can also be applied to study communication in public good provision where equal treatment is often implicitly assumed.

Suggested Citation

  • Kohei Kawamura, 2006. "Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Overconfidence: Constraints on Communication May Enhance Information Transmission," Economics Series Working Papers 268, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:oxf:wpaper:268
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:448ce7ce-fbb3-4212-bf69-33d6db658a11
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    2. Palfrey, Thomas R. & Rosenthal, Howard, 1984. "Participation and the provision of discrete public goods: a strategic analysis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 171-193, July.
    3. Gervais, Simon & Odean, Terrance, 2001. "Learning to be Overconfident," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 14(1), pages 1-27.
    4. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2001. "A Model of Expertise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 747-775.
    5. Mark Bagnoli & Barton L. Lipman, 1989. "Provision of Public Goods: Fully Implementing the Core through Private Contributions," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 56(4), pages 583-601.
    6. Kent Daniel & David Hirshleifer & Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, 1998. "Investor Psychology and Security Market Under- and Overreactions," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 53(6), pages 1839-1885, December.
    7. Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Eliciting information from multiple experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 141-160, October.
    8. Forges, Francoise M, 1986. "An Approach to Communication Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(6), pages 1375-1385, November.
    9. Myerson, Roger B, 1986. "Multistage Games with Communication," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(2), pages 323-358, March.
    10. Kay Mitusch & Roland Strausz, 2005. "Mediation in Situations of Conflict and Limited Commitment," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(2), pages 467-500, October.
    11. David Hirshleifer, 2001. "Investor Psychology and Asset Pricing," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 56(4), pages 1533-1597, August.
    12. Nahum D. Melumad & Toshiyuki Shibano, 1991. "Communication in Settings with No. Transfers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 173-198, Summer.
    13. Jose A. Scheinkman & Wei Xiong, 2003. "Overconfidence and Speculative Bubbles," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 111(6), pages 1183-1219, December.
    14. Austen-Smith David, 1993. "Interested Experts and Policy Advice: Multiple Referrals under Open Rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 3-43, January.
    15. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    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. Wei Li, 2010. "Peddling Influence through Intermediaries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1136-1162, June.

    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. Kohei Kawamura, 2007. "Constrained Communication with Multiple Agents: Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Public Good Provision," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 166, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    2. Kawamura, Kohei, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," SIRE Discussion Papers 2008-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    3. Kohei Kawamura, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 182, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    4. Martimort, David & Semenov, Aggey, 2008. "The informational effects of competition and collusion in legislative politics," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(7), pages 1541-1563, July.
    5. Migrow, Dimitri, 2021. "Designing communication hierarchies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    6. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 2004. "The art of conversation: eliciting information from experts through multi-stage communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 147-179, August.
    7. Dmitry Sedov, 2023. "Almost-truthful interim-biased mediation enables information exchange between agents with misaligned interests," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(3), pages 505-546, September.
    8. Gordon Rausser & Leo Simon & Jinhua Zhao, 2015. "Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 109-146, May.
    9. Koessler, Frédéric & Martimort, David, 2012. "Optimal delegation with multi-dimensional decisions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1850-1881.
    10. Kawamura, Kohei, 2013. "Eliciting information from a large population," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 44-54.
    11. Ambrus, Attila & Lu, Shih En, 2014. "Almost fully revealing cheap talk with imperfectly informed senders," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 174-189.
    12. Zapechelnyuk, Andriy, 2013. "Eliciting information from a committee," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 2049-2067.
    13. Minozzi, William & Woon, Jonathan, 2019. "The limited value of a second opinion: Competition and exaggeration in experimental cheap talk games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 144-162.
    14. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    15. Dezsö Szalay & Ramon Arean, 2005. "Communicating with a Team of Experts," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 05.12, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    16. Gerardi, Dino & McLean, Richard & Postlewaite, Andrew, 2009. "Aggregation of expert opinions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 339-371, March.
    17. Li, Zhuozheng & Rantakari, Heikki & Yang, Huanxing, 2016. "Competitive cheap talk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-89.
    18. McGee, Andrew & Yang, Huanxing, 2013. "Cheap talk with two senders and complementary information," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 181-191.
    19. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.
    20. Blume, Andreas & Lai, Ernest K. & Lim, Wooyoung, 2019. "Eliciting private information with noise: The case of randomized response," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 356-380.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Cheap Talk; Anonymity; Overconfidence; Equal Treatment; Public Good Provision; Noisy Communication; Exaggeration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:oxf:wpaper:268. 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: Anne Pouliquen (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sfeixuk.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.