IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jetheo/v197y2021ics0022053121001447.html

Disclosure, welfare and adverse selection

Author

Listed:
  • Pram, Kym

Abstract

I consider a broad class of economic environments where a principal contracts with an agent under adverse selection and the agent can credibly disclose information to the principal. I show that there is an equilibrium that interim Pareto dominates the equilibrium without evidence if and only if the optimal mechanism without evidence assigns the outside option to a set of types satisfying a ‘gains from trade’ property. The results apply to a range of economic environments including insurance markets, financial markets and goods markets with quality-based price discrimination.

Suggested Citation

  • Pram, Kym, 2021. "Disclosure, welfare and adverse selection," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:197:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121001447
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105327
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053121001447
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jet.2021.105327?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

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Acquisti & Curtis Taylor & Liad Wagman, 2016. "The Economics of Privacy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(2), pages 442-492, June.
    2. Besanko, David & Thakor, Anjan V, 1987. "Collateral and Rationing: Sorting Equilibria in Monopolistic and Competitive Credit Markets," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 28(3), pages 671-689, October.
    3. PRAM, Kym, 2017. "Hard evidence and welfare in adverse selection environments," Economics Working Papers MWP 2017/10, European University Institute.
    4. Dye, Ra, 1985. "Disclosure Of Nonproprietary Information," Journal of Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(1), pages 123-145.
    5. Sher, Itai & Vohra, Rakesh, 2015. "Price discrimination through communication," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    6. Jerry R. Green & Jean-Jacques Laffont, 1986. "Partially Verifiable Information and Mechanism Design," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(3), pages 447-456.
    7. Glode, Vincent & Opp, Christian C. & Zhang, Xingtan, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure in bilateral transactions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 652-688.
    8. , & ,, 2012. "Optimal insurance with adverse selection," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 7(3), September.
    9. Mussa, Michael & Rosen, Sherwin, 1978. "Monopoly and product quality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 301-317, August.
    10. S Nageeb Ali & Greg Lewis & Shoshana Vasserman, 2023. "Voluntary Disclosure and Personalized Pricing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(2), pages 538-571.
    11. Nathaniel Hendren, 2013. "Private Information and Insurance Rejections," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(5), pages 1713-1762, September.
    12. Paul Milgrom & John Roberts, 1986. "Relying on the Information of Interested Parties," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 18-32, Spring.
    13. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    14. Grossman, S J & Hart, O D, 1980. "Disclosure Laws and Takeover Bids," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 35(2), pages 323-334, May.
    15. Chade, Hector & Schlee, Edward E., 2020. "Insurance as a lemons market: Coverage denials and pooling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 189(C).
    16. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    17. Dirk Bergemann & Alessandro Bonatti, 2019. "Markets for Information: An Introduction," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 11(1), pages 85-107, August.
    18. Dirk Bergemann & Benjamin Brooks & Stephen Morris, 2015. "The Limits of Price Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(3), pages 921-957, 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. Martin Eling & Irina Gemmo & Danjela Guxha & Hato Schmeiser, 2024. "Big data, risk classification, and privacy in insurance markets," The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review, Palgrave Macmillan;International Association for the Study of Insurance Economics (The Geneva Association), vol. 49(1), pages 75-126, March.
    2. Irina Gemmo & Mark J. Browne & Helmut Gründl, 2025. "Privacy concerns in insurance markets: Implications for market equilibria and customer utility," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 58(2), pages 484-514, May.
    3. Alejandro Francetich & Burkhard Schipper, 2025. "Rationalizable Screening and Disclosure under Unawareness," Working Papers 374, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    4. Jose Higueras, 2023. "Robust Regulation of Firms' Access to Consumer Data," Papers 2305.05822, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2025.

    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. S Nageeb Ali & Greg Lewis & Shoshana Vasserman, 2023. "Voluntary Disclosure and Personalized Pricing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 90(2), pages 538-571.
    2. S. Nageeb Ali & Andreas Kleiner & Kun Zhang, 2024. "From Design to Disclosure," Papers 2411.03608, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2026.
    3. Bond, Philip & Zeng, Yao, 2022. "Silence is safest: Information disclosure when the audience’s preferences are uncertain," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 178-193.
    4. Frédéric Koessler & Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2019. "Evidence reading mechanisms," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(3), pages 375-397, October.
    5. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/3709dm0u7h9t9qlfe9vrqtn8ed is not listed on IDEAS
    6. Nika Haghtalab & Nicole Immorlica & Brendan Lucier & Markus Mobius & Divyarthi Mohan, 2022. "Communicating with Anecdotes," Papers 2205.13461, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2024.
    7. Jeremy Bertomeu & Davide Cianciaruso, 2018. "Verifiable disclosure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 65(4), pages 1011-1044, June.
    8. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    9. Paul Milgrom, 2008. "What the Seller Won't Tell You: Persuasion and Disclosure in Markets," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 22(2), pages 115-131, Spring.
    10. Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch & Roland Strausz, 2023. "Principled Mechanism Design with Evidence," Berlin School of Economics Discussion Papers 0030, Berlin School of Economics.
    11. Anna Boisits & Roland Königsgruber, 2016. "Information acquisition and disclosure by firms in the presence of additional available information," Central European Journal of Operations Research, Springer;Slovak Society for Operations Research;Hungarian Operational Research Society;Czech Society for Operations Research;Österr. Gesellschaft für Operations Research (ÖGOR);Slovenian Society Informatika - Section for Operational Research;Croatian Operational Research Society, vol. 24(1), pages 177-205, March.
    12. Benndorf, Volker & Kübler, Dorothea & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2025. "Information unraveling and limited depth of reasoning," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 154, pages 267-284.
    13. Benndorf, Volker & Kübler, Dorothea & Normann, Hans-Theo, 2025. "Information unraveling and limited depth of reasoning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 267-284.
    14. Osun, Elif B. & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2025. "Evidence games: Lying aversion and commitment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 329-350.
    15. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.
    16. Ben-Porath, Elchanan & Lipman, Barton L., 2012. "Implementation with partial provability," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1689-1724.
    17. Elchanan Ben-Porath & Barton L. Lipman, 2009. "Implementation and Partial Provability," Boston University - Department of Economics - Working Papers Series wp2009-002, Boston University - Department of Economics.
    18. Bruce Carlin & Christopher Cotton & Raphael Boleslavsky, 2017. "Competing For Capital: Auditing And Credibility In Financial Reporting," Working Paper 1377, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    19. repec:dau:papers:123456789/12406 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Adrian Hillenbrand & Svenja Hippel, 2026. "Strategic Inattention in Product Search," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 72(1), pages 693-722, January.
    21. Konrad Lang, 2018. "Voluntary Disclosure and Analyst Forecast," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(1), pages 23-36, January.
    22. Luminita Enache & Antonio Parbonetti & Anup Srivastava, 2020. "Are all outside directors created equal with respect to firm disclosure policy?," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 55(2), pages 541-577, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D4 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design
    • D8 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty
    • D42 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Monopoly
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

    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:eee:jetheo:v:197:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121001447. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622869 .

    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.