Related papers: Buying Opinions
We study a principal-agent problem with adverse selection, where the principal does not know the agent's true cost but must design a contract to optimize a specific criterion. Unlike standard screening frameworks that allow for…
When does society eventually learn the truth, or take the correct action, via observational learning? In a general model of sequential learning over social networks, we identify a simple condition for learning dubbed excludability.…
This paper proposes a model of decision-making under uncertainty in which an agent is constrained in her cognitive ability to consider complex acts. We identify the complexity of an act according to the corresponding partition of state…
A policymaker often wants to steer a decision-maker toward one of two actions, but lacks reliable knowledge of how the decision-maker perceives uncertainty or evaluates risk. We formalize a notion of robust paternalism: a modification a' of…
We consider a model of a data broker selling information to a single agent to maximize his revenue. The agent has a private valuation of the additional information, and upon receiving the signal from the data broker, the agent can conduct…
A sender with state-independent preferences (i.e., transparent motives) privately observes a signal about the state of the world before sending a message to a receiver, who subsequently takes an action. Regardless of whether the receiver…
This paper studies a dynamic information acquisition model with payoff externalities. Two players can acquire costly information about an unknown state before taking a safe or risky action. Both information and the action taken are private.…
What is the purpose of pre-analysis plans, and how should they be designed? We model the interaction between an agent who analyzes data and a principal who makes a decision based on agent reports. The agent could be the manufacturer of a…
We study a principal-agent team production model. The principal hires a team of agents to participate in a common production task. The exact effort of each agent is unobservable and unverifiable, but the total production outcome (e.g. the…
Reinforcement Learning agents are expected to eventually perform well. Typically, this takes the form of a guarantee about the asymptotic behavior of an algorithm given some assumptions about the environment. We present an algorithm for a…
Precise information is essential for making good policies, especially those regarding reform decisions. However, decision-makers may hesitate to gather such information if certain decisions could have negative impacts on their future…
Appropriate decisions depend on information gathered beforehand, yet such information is often obtained through intermediaries with biased preferences. Motivated by settings such as testing and recertification in organ transplantation, we…
We consider an infinite collection of agents who make decisions, sequentially, about an unknown underlying binary state of the world. Each agent, prior to making a decision, receives an independent private signal whose distribution depends…
We study a screening problem in which an agent privately observes a set of feasible technologies and can strategically disclose only a subset to the principal. The principal then takes an action whose payoff consequences for both players…
In the classical principal-agent hidden-action contract model, a principal delegates the execution of a costly task to an agent. In order to complete the task, the agent chooses an action from a set of actions, where each potential action…
This paper examines the optimal contracts in a two-dimensional screening model where one dimension(group identity) is verifiable by agents but not falsifiable. A principal offers contracts to agents who differ in cost types and group…
We present an extended version of the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma game in which agents with limited memory receive recommendations about the unknown opponent to decide whether to play with. Since agents can receive more than one…
If we could define the set of all bad outcomes, we could hard-code an agent which avoids them; however, in sufficiently complex environments, this is infeasible. We do not know of any general-purpose approaches in the literature to avoiding…
We consider the mechanism design problem of a principal allocating a single good to one of several agents without monetary transfers. Each agent desires the good and uses it to create value for the principal. We designate this value as the…
How do consultants price expertise? This paper studies a problem of selling information products (expertise) to a buyer (client) who faces decision-making problem under uncertainty. The client is privately informed about the type of…