Scoring Strategic Agents

Ian Ball

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2025, vol. 17, issue 1, 97-129

Abstract: I introduce a model of predictive scoring. A receiver wants to predict a sender's quality. An intermediary observes multiple features of the sender and aggregates them into a score. Based on the score, the receiver makes a decision. The sender prefers "higher" decisions, and she can distort each feature at a privately known cost. I characterize the scoring rule that maximizes decision accuracy. This rule underweights some features to deter sender distortion, and overweights other features so that the score is correct on average. The receiver prefers this scoring rule to full disclosure because it mitigates his commitment problem.

JEL-codes: C72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20230275 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20230275.appx (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20230275.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
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:aejmic:v:17:y:2025:i:1:p:97-129

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

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20230275

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

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