Conversations among Competitors

Jeremy Stein

American Economic Review, 2008, vol. 98, issue 5, 2150-62

Abstract: I develop a model of bilateral conversations in which players honestly exchange ideas with their competitors. The key to incentive compatibility is complementarity in the information structure: a player can generate a new insight only if he has access to his counterpart’s previous thoughts on a topic. I then examine a social network in which A has a conversation with B, then B has a conversation with C, and so on. Relatively underdeveloped ideas can travel long distances over the network. More valuable ideas, by contrast, tend to remain localized among small groups of agents. (JEL D83)

JEL-codes: D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.5.2150
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (58)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.98.5.2150 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/dec08/20071005_app.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Conversations among Competitors (2008)
Working Paper: Conversations Among Competitors (2007)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aecrev:v:98:y:2008:i:5:p:2150-62

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().