IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed011/1273.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Should the Flatterers be Avoided?

Author

Listed:
  • Nicolas Klein

    (University of Bonn)

  • Tymofiy Mylovanov

    (Penn State University)

Abstract

We analyze a dynamic career concerns game between an expert and a decision maker. In each period, the decision maker has the option of obtaining cheap-talk advice from the expert, who is merely interested in his continued employment. The expert's quality is initially unknown to both parties. The incentive problem is that the expert might attempt to avoid appearing uninformed by concealing his true opinion if it contradicts the predominant view. Nevertheless, if a competent expert never makes mistakes, the fully revealing first-best outcome can be implemented provided the time horizon is sufficiently long. For shorter time horizons, the optimal equilibrium in this case features a grace period during which the expert accumulates some private information about his quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Nicolas Klein & Tymofiy Mylovanov, 2011. "Should the Flatterers be Avoided?," 2011 Meeting Papers 1273, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed011:1273
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2011/paper_1273.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicolas Klein & Sven Rady, 2011. "Negatively Correlated Bandits," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 78(2), pages 693-732.
    2. , & ,, 2012. "A principal-agent model of sequential testing," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), September.
    3. Godfrey Keller & Sven Rady & Martin Cripps, 2005. "Strategic Experimentation with Exponential Bandits," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 39-68, January.
    4. Bergemann, Dirk & Valimaki, Juuso, 1996. "Learning and Strategic Pricing," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 64(5), pages 1125-1149, September.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Ulrigh Hege, 2005. "The Financing of Innovation: Learning and Stopping," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 36(4), pages 719-752, Winter.
    6. Dirk Bergemann & Juuso Välimäki, 2000. "Experimentation in Markets," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(2), pages 213-234.
    7. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "A two-armed bandit theory of market pricing," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 185-202, October.
    8. Bergemann, Dirk & Hege, Ulrich, 1998. "Venture capital financing, moral hazard, and learning," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 22(6-8), pages 703-735, August.
    9. , & ,, 2010. "Strategic experimentation with Poisson bandits," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 5(2), May.
    10. Morgan, John & Stocken, Phillip C, 2003. "An Analysis of Stock Recommendations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(1), pages 183-203, Spring.
    11. Heski Bar-Isaac, 2003. "Reputation and Survival: Learning in a Dynamic Signalling Model," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 70(2), pages 231-251.
    12. Klein, Nicolas, 2013. "Strategic learning in teams," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 636-657.
    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. Johannes Hoelzemann & Nicolas Klein, 2021. "Bandits in the lab," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), pages 1021-1051, July.
    2. Chen, Chia-Hui & Ishida, Junichiro, 2018. "Hierarchical experimentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 365-404.
    3. Heidhues, Paul & Rady, Sven & Strack, Philipp, 2015. "Strategic experimentation with private payoffs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 531-551.
    4. Boyarchenko, Svetlana, 2021. "Inefficiency of sponsored research," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).
    5. Johannes Hörner & Larry Samuelson, 2013. "Incentives for experimenting agents," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(4), pages 632-663, December.
    6. Besanko, David & Tong, Jian & Wu, Jianjun, 2016. "Subsidizing research programs with "if" and "when" uncertainty in the face of severe informational constraints," Discussion Paper Series In Economics And Econometrics 1605, Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton.
    7. Sofia Moroni, 2019. "Experimentation in Organizations," Working Paper 6631, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    8. Gomes, Renato & Gottlieb, Daniel & Maestri, Lucas, 2016. "Experimentation and project selection: Screening and learning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 145-169.
    9. Sofia Moroni, 2016. "Experimentation in Organizations," Working Paper 5876, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    10. Svetlana Boyarchenko, 2020. "Super- and submodularity of stopping games with random observations," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(4), pages 983-1022, November.
    11. Kaustav Das, 2014. "Strategic Experimentation with Competition and Private Arrival of Information," Discussion Papers 1404, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    12. Asaf Cohen & Eilon Solan, 2013. "Bandit Problems with Lévy Processes," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 38(1), pages 92-107, February.
    13. Khalil, Fahad & Lawarree, Jacques & Rodivilov, Alexander, 2020. "Learning from failures: Optimal contracts for experimentation and production," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    14. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Philipp Harms, 2013. "Two-Armed Restless Bandits with Imperfect Information: Stochastic Control and Indexability," NBER Working Papers 19043, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Arthur Charpentier & Romuald Élie & Carl Remlinger, 2023. "Reinforcement Learning in Economics and Finance," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 62(1), pages 425-462, June.
    16. Sorensen, Morten, 2007. "Learning by Investing: Evidence from Venture Capital," SIFR Research Report Series 53, Institute for Financial Research.
    17. Rodivilov, Alexander, 2022. "Monitoring innovation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 297-326.
    18. Kaustav Das, 2017. "The Role of Heterogeneity in a model of Strategic Experimentation," Discussion Papers 1703, University of Exeter, Department of Economics.
    19. Rosenberg, Dinah & Salomon, Antoine & Vieille, Nicolas, 2013. "On games of strategic experimentation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 31-51.
    20. Forand, Jean Guillaume, 2015. "Keeping your options open," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 47-68.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed011:1273. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.