Private vs. public communication: Difference of opinion and reputational concerns

Felipe Balmaceda ()

Journal of Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 196, issue C

Abstract: This paper studies the cost and benefits of private and public communication in a game with a policy maker, a privately-informed expert, and the public. The policy maker and the expert have different opinions/views about the state of the world and both the expert and policy maker care about the expert's reputation with the public. The amount of information acquisition and transmission under private vs. public communication, depends on how much the policy maker and the expert differ in opinion. If both have either moderate or very extreme opinions, the costs and benefits are the same. In contrast, when the policy maker is moderate and the expert has more extreme opinions, private communication is better, while if the policy maker is extreme and the expert has moderate views, public communication is better.

Keywords: Private and public communication; Transparency; Experts; Non-common priors; Reputation; Accountability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C7 D2 D21 D8 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053121001319
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:jetheo:v:196:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121001319

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105314

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().