Evaluating Strategic Forecasters

Rahul Deb, Mallesh M. Pai and Maher Said

American Economic Review, 2018, vol. 108, issue 10, 3057-3103

Abstract: Motivated by the question of how one should evaluate professional election forecasters, we study a novel dynamic mechanism design problem without transfers. A principal who wishes to hire only high-quality forecasters is faced with an agent of unknown quality. The agent privately observes signals about a publicly observable future event, and may strategically misrepresent information to inflate the principal's perception of his quality. We show that the optimal deterministic mechanism is simple and easy to implement in practice: it evaluates a single, optimally timed prediction. We study the generality of this result and its robustness to randomization and noncommitment.

JEL-codes: C53 D72 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.20170299
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Evaluating Strategic Forecasters (2018)
Working Paper: Evaluating Strategic Forecasters (2017)
Working Paper: Evaluating Strategic Forecasters (2017)
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