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Investment in concealable information by biased experts
Author(s) -
Kartik Navin,
Lee Frances Xu,
Suen Wing
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the rand journal of economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.687
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 1756-2171
pISSN - 0741-6261
DOI - 10.1111/1756-2171.12166
Subject(s) - decision maker , persuasion , cheap talk , investment (military) , advice (programming) , decision analysis , investment decisions , business , microeconomics , computer science , economics , marketing , management science , psychology , behavioral economics , social psychology , mathematical economics , political science , programming language , politics , law
We study a persuasion game in which biased—possibly opposed—experts strategically acquire costly information that they can then conceal or reveal. We show that information acquisition decisions are strategic substitutes when experts have linear preferences over a decision maker's beliefs. The logic turns on how each expert expects the decision maker's posterior to be affected by the presence of other experts should he not acquire information that would turn out to be favorable. The decision maker may prefer to solicit advice from just one biased expert even when others—including those biased in the opposite direction (singular)—are available.