Related papers: Rational Aversion to Information
In designing an intelligent system that must be able to explain its reasoning to a human user, or to provide generalizations that the human user finds reasonable, it may be useful to take into consideration psychological data on what types…
A policymaker discloses public information to interacting agents who also acquire costly private information. More precise public information reduces the precision and cost of acquired private information. Considering this effect, what…
When additional information sources are available, an important question for an agent solving a certain problem is how to optimally use the information the sources are capable of providing. A framework that relates information accuracy on…
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.…
When an investor is faced with the option to purchase additional information regarding an asset price, how much should she pay? To address this question, we solve for the indifference price of information in a setting where a trader…
Referring is one of the most basic and prevalent uses of language. How do speakers choose from the wealth of referring expressions at their disposal? Rational theories of language use have come under attack for decades for not being able to…
Ambiguity-averse decision makers typically dislike not only the presence of ambiguous events but also their increase, contrary to what standard ambiguity models predict. We axiomatically study such a decision maker. She avoids ex ante…
When deciding how to act under uncertainty, agents may choose to act to reduce uncertainty or they may act despite that uncertainty. In communicative settings, an important way of reducing uncertainty is by asking clarification questions…
The human mind is capable of extraordinary achievements, yet it often appears to work against itself. It actively defends its cherished beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence, conveniently interprets information to conform to…
Psycholinguistic studies of human word processing and lexical access provide ample evidence of the preferred nature of word-initial versus word-final segments, e.g., in terms of attention paid by listeners (greater) or the likelihood of…
It is well known that sequential decision making may lead to information cascades. That is, when agents make decisions based on their private information, as well as observing the actions of those before them, then it might be rational to…
Software updates are critical to the performance, compatibility, and security of software systems. However, users do not always install updates, leaving their machines vulnerable to attackers' exploits. While recent studies have highlighted…
In this note, I explore the implications of informational robustness under the assumption of common belief in rationality. That is, predictions for incomplete-information games which are valid across all possible information structures.…
Information and uncertainty are closely related and extensively studied concepts in a number of scientific disciplines such as communication theory, probability theory, and statistics. Increasing the information arguably reduces the…
We consider periodical status updates between a transmitter and a legitimate receiver, in the presence of an eavesdropper that is sometimes able to capture pieces of information. We assume that, in the absence of such a threat, the…
In recent studies of political decision-making, apparently anomalous behavior has been observed on the part of voters, in which negative information about a candidate strengthens, rather than weakens, a prior positive opinion about the…
First, for decades the use of anonymity in reviews for science funding proposals and for evaluating manuscripts for publication has been gradually corrupting American science, encouraging and rewarding the dark elements of human nature.…
This paper provides a behavioral analysis of conservatism in beliefs. I introduce a new axiom, Dynamic Conservatism, that relaxes Dynamic Consistency when information and prior beliefs "conflict." When the agent is a subjective expected…
I consider the monopolistic pricing of informational good. A buyer's willingness to pay for information is from inferring the unknown payoffs of actions in decision making. A monopolistic seller and the buyer each observes a private signal…
We study approximation and integration problems and compare the quality of optimal information with the quality of random information. For some problems random information is almost optimal and for some other problems random information is…