IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/qed/wpaper/1321.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Information Sharing and Incentives in Organizations

Author

Listed:
  • Jean-Etienne de Bettignies

    () (Queen)

  • Jan Zabojnik

    () (Queen)

Abstract

We examine optimal information flows between a manager and a worker who is in charge of evaluating a parameter of interest, e.g. the value of a project. The manager may possesses information about the parameter, and, if informed, may divulge her information to the worker. We show that information sharing may weaken the worker's incentives and that, consequently, the manager may find it optimal to conceal her information from the worker. Moreover, the manager faces a time-inconsistency problem, which leads her to conceal her information more often than she would if she could commit to an information sharing policy. We build on these results to address issues related to authority in organizations.

Suggested Citation

  • Jean-Etienne de Bettignies & Jan Zabojnik, 2013. "Information Sharing and Incentives in Organizations," Working Papers 1321, Queen's University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:qed:wpaper:1321
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca/working_papers/papers/qed_wp_1321.pdf
    File Function: First version 2013
    Download Restriction: no

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Aghion, Philippe & Tirole, Jean, 1997. "Formal and Real Authority in Organizations," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 105(1), pages 1-29, February.
    2. Ricardo Alonso & Wouter Dessein & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "When Does Coordination Require Centralization?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 145-179, March.
    3. Jan Zabojnik, 2002. "Centralized and Decentralized Decision Making in Organizations," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(1), pages 1-22, January.
    4. Steven D. Levitt & Christopher M. Snyder, 1997. "Is No. News Bad News? Information Transmission and the Role of "Early Warning" in the Principal-Agent Model," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(4), pages 641-661, Winter.
    5. Gromb, Denis & Martimort, David, 2007. "Collusion and the organization of delegated expertise," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 137(1), pages 271-299, November.
    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. Mehdi Shadmehr & Dan Bernhardt, 2015. "State Censorship," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 280-307, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Information non-disclosure; expert evaluation; agency costs; authority;

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L23 - Industrial Organization - - Firm Objectives, Organization, and Behavior - - - Organization of Production

    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:qed:wpaper:1321. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Mark Babcock). General contact details of provider: http://edirc.repec.org/data/qedquca.html .

    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 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.

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.