IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2509.04037.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Reputation, Risk, and Visibility

Author

Listed:
  • Georgy Lukyanov

Abstract

When does reputation make experts play it safe, and what policy reverses that? I isolate a single lever - visibility of outcomes. In a two-page model with binary signals and outcomes, I show: (i) with an uninformative safe option and symmetric visibility, career concerns alone do not generate conservatism; (ii) increasing failure visibility (as in Registered Reports) weakens high-reputation caution and relaxes selection. I provide a necessary-and-sufficient local sign test, agnostic about utility curvature and allowing informative safe actions, and an identification map suitable for staggered RR adoption.

Suggested Citation

  • Georgy Lukyanov, 2025. "Reputation, Risk, and Visibility," Papers 2509.04037, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2509.04037
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2509.04037
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    2. Garret Christensen & Edward Miguel, 2018. "Transparency, Reproducibility, and the Credibility of Economics Research," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 920-980, September.
    3. Abel Brodeur & Mathias Lé & Marc Sangnier & Yanos Zylberberg, 2016. "Star Wars: The Empirics Strike Back," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 1-32, January.
    4. Christopher D. Chambers & Loukia Tzavella, 2022. "The past, present and future of Registered Reports," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 6(1), pages 29-42, January.
    5. Scharfstein, David S & Stein, Jeremy C, 1990. "Herd Behavior and Investment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 80(3), pages 465-479, June.
    6. Marco Ottaviani & Peter Norman Sørensen, 2006. "Reputational cheap talk," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(1), pages 155-175, March.
    7. Milgrom, Paul & Shannon, Chris, 1994. "Monotone Comparative Statics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(1), pages 157-180, January.
    8. Simon Board & Moritz Meyer‐ter‐Vehn, 2013. "Reputation for Quality," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(6), pages 2381-2462, November.
    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Stephen Hansen & Michael McMahon & Andrea Prat, 2018. "Transparency and Deliberation Within the FOMC: A Computational Linguistics Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 133(2), pages 801-870.
    4. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. 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.
    6. Hahn, Volker, 2017. "Committee design with endogenous participation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 388-408.
    7. Thibaut Arpinon & Romain Espinosa, 2023. "A practical guide to Registered Reports for economists," Journal of the Economic Science Association, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 9(1), pages 90-122, June.
    8. Thibaut Arpinon & Romain Espinosa, 2023. "A Practical Guide to Registered Reports for Economists," Post-Print halshs-03897719, HAL.
    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. Thomas, Caroline, 2019. "Experimentation with reputation concerns – Dynamic signalling with changing types," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 366-415.
    12. Nica, Melania, 2023. "Reputation formation and reinforcement of biases in a post-truth world," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 455-478.
    13. Pavesi, Filippo & Scotti, Massimo, 2022. "Good lies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
      • Filippo Pavesi & Massimo Scotti, 2019. "Good Lies," Working Paper Series 39, Economics Discipline Group, UTS Business School, University of Technology, Sydney.
    14. Catonini, Emiliano & Stepanov, Sergey, 2023. "Reputation and information aggregation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 208(C), pages 156-173.
    15. Mariano, Beatriz, 2012. "Market power and reputational concerns in the ratings industry," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1616-1626.
    16. 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).
    17. 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.
    18. Bruno Ferman & Cristine Pinto & Vitor Possebom, 2020. "Cherry Picking with Synthetic Controls," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 39(2), pages 510-532, March.
    19. Alexander Frankel & Maximilian Kasy, 2022. "Which Findings Should Be Published?," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 14(1), pages 1-38, February.
    20. Cukierman, Alex & Lustenberger, Thomas, 2017. "International evidence on professional interest rates forecasts: The impact of forecasting ability," CEPR Discussion Papers 12489, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:arx:papers:2509.04037. 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.org/ .

    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.