 Good liesFilippo Pavesi and Massimo Scotti European Economic Review, 2022, vol. 141, issue C Abstract: Decision makers often face uncertainty about the ability and the integrity of their advisors. If an expert is sufficiently concerned about establishing a reputation for being skilled and unbiased, she may truthfully report her private information about the decision-relevant state. However, while in a truthtelling equilibrium the decision maker learns only about the ability of the expert, in an equilibrium with some misreporting she also learns about the expert’s bias. Although truthtelling allows for better current decisions, it may lead to worse sorting outcomes. This occurs if misreporting is principally caused by biased experts driven by their conflict of interest rather than by unbiased experts attempting to signal their type. Whenever lying has these features, it increases the decision maker’s expected utility with respect to truthtelling if she is sufficiently concerned about future choices. In these cases, it is optimal to adopt policies aimed at reducing advisors’ career concerns and we suggest real world examples in which these could be implemented. Keywords: Experts; Reputation; Cheap talk; Conflicts of interest; Information transmission; Lies (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:eecrev:v:141:y:2022:i:c:s0014292121002506 DOI: 10.1016/j.euroecorev.2021.103965 Access Statistics for this article European Economic Review is currently edited by T.S. Eicher, A. Imrohoroglu, E. Leeper, J. Oechssler and M. Pesendorfer More articles in European Economic Review from Elsevier |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.