IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pra/mprapa/43825.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The Perverse Incentive of Knowing the Truth

Author

Listed:
  • Garcia-Martinez, Jose A.

Abstract

We show that the observation by a principal of the effectiveness of an expert‘s action could induce the expert to lie, damaging the principal. A career-minded expert receives a private-informative signal about the real state of the world, and then he takes an action that can match or not the real state. If a principal observes the consequences of this expert’s action, i.e., if the action matches or not the real state, this expert could disregard his valuable information damaging the principal: the expert plays the opposite action to that recommended by his signal and consequently decreases the probability of matching the real state. However, this expert could play the "recommended" action with positive probability if consequences are not observed. The previous literature has found that "transparency of consequence" can only improves the incentives of the expert to reveal his valuable information. The paradoxical behavior we have found can appear when the expert needs to signal with one action two different kinds of information, and there is a particular "trade-off" in the way of signaling; this "trade-off" can be affected in an unexpected way by the observation of the expert’s action consequences. In this paper, we present a simple model to capture this idea, and characterize the range of the parameters where that occurs.

Suggested Citation

  • Garcia-Martinez, Jose A., 2013. "The Perverse Incentive of Knowing the Truth," MPRA Paper 43825, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    • Handle: RePEc:pra:mprapa:43825
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/43825/1/MPRA_paper_43825.pdf
    File Function: original 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. Stephen Morris, 2001. "Political Correctness," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(2), pages 231-265, April.
    3. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part I: Comparing Information Structures," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 183-198.
    4. Bengt Holmström, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 169-182.
    5. Fox, Justin & Van Weelden, Richard, 2012. "Costly transparency," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(1), pages 142-150.
    6. Mathias Dewatripont & Ian Jewitt & Jean Tirole, 1999. "The Economics of Career Concerns, Part I: Comparing Information Structures," Review of Economic Studies, Oxford University Press, vol. 66(1), pages 183-198.
    7. Bengt Holmstrom, 1999. "Managerial Incentive Problems: A Dynamic Perspective," NBER Working Papers 6875, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    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. Andrea Prat, 2005. "The Wrong Kind of Transparency," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(3), pages 862-877, June.
    2. FU, Qiang & LI, Ming, 2010. "Policy Making with Reputation Concerns," Cahiers de recherche 09-2010, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    3. Raphael Boleslavsky & Christopher Cotton, 2015. "Information and Extremism in Elections," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(1), pages 165-207, February.
    4. Kunio Tsuyuhara, 2012. "An advice game with reputational and career concerns," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(4), pages 3480-3487.
    5. Mario, Gilli & Yuan, Li, 2018. "Transitions and Political Stability in Autocracies. The Role of Public Perception," Working Papers 383, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised 13 Jul 2018.
    6. Lefgren, Lars J. & Platt, Brennan & Price, Joseph & Higbee, Samuel, 2019. "Outcome based accountability: Theory and evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 121-137.
    7. Jacques Crémer, 2010. "Arm's-Length Relationships without Moral Hazard," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 8(2-3), pages 377-387, 04-05.
    8. Laurent Franckx & Isabelle Brose, 2004. "A theoretical framework for incentives in the public sector," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 10(2), pages 1-8.
    9. Martin Byford, 2003. "Moral Hazard From Costless Hidden Actions," Working Papers 2003.03, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    10. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    11. 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.
    12. Gürtler, Marc & Gürtler, Oliver, 2014. "The interaction of explicit and implicit contracts: A signaling approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 135-146.
    13. Byford, Martin C., 2017. "Moral hazard in strategic decision making," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 114-136.
    14. 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.
    15. Ishida, Junichiro, 2012. "Contracting with self-esteem concerns," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 329-340.
    16. Beetsma, Roel & Debrun, Xavier & Sloof, Randolph, 2022. "The political economy of fiscal transparency and independent fiscal councils," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    17. Hartarska, Valentina, 2005. "Governance and performance of microfinance institutions in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 33(10), pages 1627-1643, October.
    18. EllenE. Meade & David Stasavage, 2008. "Publicity of Debate and the Incentive to Dissent: Evidence from the US Federal Reserve," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 118(528), pages 695-717, April.
    19. Kimiko Terai & Amihai Glazer, 2015. "Principal-Agent Problems When Principal Allocates a Budget," Keio-IES Discussion Paper Series 2015-012, Institute for Economics Studies, Keio University.
    20. Phong T. H. Ngo & Steven Roberts, 2021. "There is no ‘I’ in team: Career concerns, risk‐taking incentives, and team outcomes," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 122-138, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transparency; Principal-Agent; Reputation;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    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:pra:mprapa:43825. 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: Joachim Winter (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vfmunde.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.