Lost in Transmission

Thomas Graeber, Shakked Noy, Christopher Roth and Thomas W. Graeber

No 10903, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: How does word-of-mouth transmission distort economic information? We pay participants to listen to audio recordings containing economic forecasts and accurately transmit the information through voice messages. Other participants listen to an original or a transmitted recording before stating incentivized beliefs. Across various transmitter incentive schemes, a forecast’s reliability is lost in transmission at a far higher rate than the forecast’s level. Reliable and unreliable information, once filtered through transmission, impact listener beliefs similarly. Mechanism experiments show that information about reliability is not perceived as less relevant or harder to transmit, but is less likely to come to mind during transmission.

Keywords: information transmission; word-of-mouth; narratives; reliability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe and nep-exp
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Working Paper: Lost in Transmission (2024)
Working Paper: Lost in Transmission (2024)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10903

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