Buying Opinions

Mark Whitmeyer and Kun Zhang

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: A principal hires an agent to acquire soft information about an unknown state. Even though neither how the agent learns nor what the agent discovers are contractible, we show the principal is unconstrained as to what information the agent can be induced to acquire and report honestly. When the agent is risk neutral, and a) is not asked to learn too much, b) can acquire information sufficiently cheaply, or c) can face sufficiently large penalties, the principal can attain the first-best outcome. We discuss the effect of risk aversion (on the part of the agent) and characterize the second-best contracts.

Date: 2022-02, Revised 2023-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cta and nep-mic
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