Privacy concerns, voluntary disclosure of information, and unraveling: An experiment

Volker Benndorf, Dorothea Kübler and Hans-Theo Normann

No 168, DICE Discussion Papers from Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE)

Abstract: We study the voluntary revelation of private information in a labor-market experiment where workers can reveal their productivity at a cost. While rational revelation improves a worker's payoff, it imposes a negative externality on others and may trigger further revelation. Such unraveling can be observed frequently in our data although less often than predicted. Equilibrium play is more likely when subjects are predicted to conceal their productivity than when they should reveal. This tendency of under-revelation, especially of low-productivity workers, is consistent with the level-k model. A loaded frame where the private information concerns the workers' health status leads to less revelation than a neutral frame.

Keywords: information revelation; level-k reasoning; privacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C90 C91 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Journal Article: Privacy concerns, voluntary disclosure of information, and unraveling: An experiment (2015)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:dicedp:168

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