Accuracy Is (Generically) Bad For Compliance
Theoretical Economics
2025-05-26 v1
Abstract
We demonstrate that the set of cost distributions under which the optimal strategy for maximizing compliance (or more generally, effort) in a binary choice environment is identical to the optimal strategy for maximizing the accuracy of the reward (minimizing Type-I and Type-II errors) is finitely shy (Anderson and Zame (2001) in the space of all smooth parameterized real-valued distributions possessing full support on the real line. In words, this implies that maximizing compliance and maximizing accuracy "almost always" call for different incentive schemes.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2505.18094,
title = {Accuracy Is (Generically) Bad For Compliance},
author = {John W. Patty and Elizabeth Maggie Penn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2505.18094},
year = {2025}
}