IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bejtec/v12y2012i1n4.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transparency, Career Concerns, and Incentives for Acquiring Expertise

Author

Listed:
  • Bar-Isaac Heski

    (NYU)

Abstract

An agent, who cares about signaling his ability, chooses among different projects that generate observable outcomes. The agent's information about which project delivers a good outcome depends on both his ability and his effort. This paper examines how the agent's incentives for effort change depending on whether or not the agent's project choice is observed. If this choice is publicly observed, the agent's project choice is distorted towards particular types of projects. When the outcomes of these advantaged projects are particularly sensitive to the agent's information, such transparency boosts the agent's information-gathering incentives. However, when public observation of project choice leads the agent to choose information-insensitive projects, then such transparency dampens incentives. This provides a more nuanced view of the implications of action transparency in the literature on career concerns for experts.

Suggested Citation

  • Bar-Isaac Heski, 2012. "Transparency, Career Concerns, and Incentives for Acquiring Expertise," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-15, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bejtec:v:12:y:2012:i:1:n:4
    DOI: 10.1515/1935-1704.1796
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/1935-1704.1796
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/1935-1704.1796?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "The strategy of professional forecasting," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 441-466, August.
    2. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    3. Gilat Levy, 2007. "Decision Making in Committees: Transparency, Reputation, and Voting Rules," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(1), pages 150-168, March.
    4. Swank, Otto & Visser, Bauke, 2008. "The consequences of endogenizing information for the performance of a sequential decision procedure," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 65(3-4), pages 667-681, March.
    5. Jeffrey C. Ely & Juuso Välimäki, 2003. "Bad Reputation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 785-814.
    6. Bauke Visser & Otto H. Swank, 2007. "On Committees of Experts," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 337-372.
    7. Heski Bar-Isaac, 2008. "Which kind of transparency and when? Career Concerns, and Incentives for Acquiring Expertise," Working Papers 08-23, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    8. Roland Benabou & Guy Laroque, 1992. "Using Privileged Information to Manipulate Markets: Insiders, Gurus, and Credibility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 921-958.
    9. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2010. "Public Goods, Social Pressure, and the Choice between Privacy and Publicity," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 2(2), pages 191-221, May.
    10. Malcomson James M, 2009. "Principal and Expert Agent," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 9(1), pages 1-36, May.
    11. Demski, Js & Sappington, Dem, 1987. "Delegated Expertise," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(1), pages 68-89.
    12. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    13. Levy, Gilat, 2004. "Anti-herding and strategic consultation," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 503-525, June.
    14. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2006. "Reputational cheap talk," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 155-175, March.
    15. Adam Brandenburger & Ben Polak, 1996. "When Managers Cover Their Posteriors: Making the Decisions the Market Wants to See," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 27(3), pages 523-541, Autumn.
    16. Kreps, David M. & Wilson, Robert, 1982. "Reputation and imperfect information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 253-279, August.
    17. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter Norman, 2006. "Professional advice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 126(1), pages 120-142, January.
    18. Bar-Isaac, Heski & Tadelis, Steven, 2008. "Seller Reputation," Foundations and Trends(R) in Microeconomics, now publishers, vol. 4(4), pages 273-351, August.
    19. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1982. "Predation, reputation, and entry deterrence," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 27(2), pages 280-312, August.
    20. Dezsö Szalay, 2005. "The Economics of Clear Advice and Extreme Options," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 72(4), pages 1173-1198.
    21. Suurmond, Guido & Swank, Otto H. & Visser, Bauke, 2004. "On the bad reputation of reputational concerns," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2817-2838, December.
    22. Milbourn, Todd T & Shockley, Richard L & Thakor, Anjan V, 2001. "Managerial Career Concerns and Investments in Information," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(2), pages 334-351, Summer.
    23. John Fingleton, 2005. "Career Concerns of Bargainers," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 179-204, April.
    24. Zwiebel, Jeffrey, 1995. "Corporate Conservatism and Relative Compensation," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(1), pages 1-25, February.
    25. Harrington, Joseph E, Jr, 1993. "Economic Policy, Economic Performance, and Elections," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(1), pages 27-42, March.
    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. Otto (O.H.) Swank & Bauke (B.) Visser, 2018. "Committees as Active Audiences: Reputation Concerns and Information Acquisition," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 18-068/VII, Tinbergen Institute, revised 01 May 2019.
    2. S. Nageeb Ali & Roland Bénabou, 2020. "Image versus Information: Changing Societal Norms and Optimal Privacy," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 116-164, August.
    3. Hanzhe Li, 2022. "Transparency and Policymaking with Endogenous Information Provision," Papers 2204.08876, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2023.
    4. Marino, Anthony M., 2014. "Transparency in agency: The constant elasticity case and extensions," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 9-21.
    5. Roland Benabou & Jean Tirole, 2011. "Laws and Norms," NBER Working Papers 17579, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Swank, Otto H. & Visser, Bauke, 2023. "Committees as active audiences: Reputation concerns and information acquisition," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 221(C).
    7. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.

    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. Liu, Yaozhou Franklin & Sanyal, Amal, 2012. "When second opinions hurt: A model of expert advice under career concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 1-16.
    2. Dasgupta, Amil & Sarafidis, Yianis, 2009. "Managers as administrators: Reputation and incentives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 70(1-2), pages 155-163, May.
    3. Elisabeth Schulte & Mike Felgenhauer, 2017. "Preselection and expert advice," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 46(3), pages 693-714, August.
    4. Fu, Qiang & Li, Ming, 2014. "Reputation-concerned policy makers and institutional status quo bias," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 15-25.
    5. Ghosh, Saptarshi P. & Roy, Jaideep, 2015. "Committees with leaks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 207-214.
    6. Klein, Nicolas & Mylovanov, Tymofiy, 2017. "Will truth out?—An advisor’s quest to appear competent," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 112-121.
    7. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    8. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    9. Balmaceda, Felipe, 2021. "Private vs. public communication: Difference of opinion and reputational concerns," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    10. Di Maggio, Marco, 2009. "Accountability and Cheap Talk," MPRA Paper 18652, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Fox, Justin & Van Weelden, Richard, 2012. "Costly transparency," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 142-150.
    12. Catonini, Emiliano & Stepanov, Sergey, 2023. "Reputation and information aggregation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 156-173.
    13. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    14. Chen, Chia-Hui & Ishida, Junichiro, 2015. "Careerist experts and political incorrectness," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 1-18.
    15. Rieder, Kilian, 2022. "Monetary policy decision-making by committee: Why, when and how it can work," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    16. Aleksei Smirnov & Egor Starkov, 2019. "Timing of predictions in dynamic cheap talk: experts vs. quacks," ECON - Working Papers 334, Department of Economics - University of Zurich.
    17. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Oxford University Press, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
    18. Jeffrey C. Ely & Juuso Välimäki, 2003. "Bad Reputation," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(3), pages 785-814.
    19. Schottmüller, Christoph, 2019. "Too good to be truthful: Why competent advisers are fired," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 333-360.
    20. Bizer, Kilian & Meub, Lukas & Proeger, Till & Spiwoks, Markus, 2014. "Strategic coordination in forecasting: An experimental study," University of Göttingen Working Papers in Economics 195, University of Goettingen, Department of Economics.

    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:bpj:bejtec:v:12:y:2012:i:1:n:4. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    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.