Noisy Agents

Francisco Espinosa and Debraj Ray

No 24627, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Agents signal their type in a principal-agent model; the principal seeks to retain good agents. Types are signaled with some ambient noise. Agents can choose to add or remove additional noise at a cost. It is shown that monotone retention strategies, in which the principal keeps the agent if the signal crosses some threshold, are generically never equilibria. The main result identifies an equilibrium with a bounded retention zone, in which the principal is wary of both excessively good and excessively bad signals: she retains the agent if the signal is “moderate” and replaces him otherwise. The equilibria we uncover are robust to various extensions: non-normal signal structures, non-binary types, interacting agents, costly mean-shifting, or dynamics with term limits. We discuss applications to risky portfolio management, fake news and noisy government statistics.

JEL-codes: D72 D82 D86 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-mic
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