Relying on the Information of Interested Parties

Paul Milgrom and John Roberts

No 749, Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University

Abstract: We investigate the conventional wisdom that competition among interested parties attempting to influence a decision maker by providing verifiable information brings out all the relevant information. We find that, if the decision maker is strategically sophisticated and well informed about the relevant variables and about the preferences of the interested party or parties, competition may be unnecessary; while if the decision maker is unsophisticated or not well informed, competition is not generally sufficient. However, if the interested parties' interests are sufficiently opposed, or if the decision maker is seeking to advance the parties' decision maker's need for prior knowledge about the relevant variables and for strategic sophistication. In other settings, only the combination of competition among information providers and a sophisticated skepticism is sufficient to allow defective decision making.

Keywords: Law and economics; regulation; persuasion games; revelation games; lobbying; strategic information transmission; adversary system (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 1985-05
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Published in Rand Journal of Economics (1986), 17: 18-32

Downloads: (external link)
https://cowles.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/pub/d07/d0749.pdf (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 404 Not Found

Related works:
Journal Article: Relying on the Information of Interested Parties (1986)
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:cwl:cwldpp:749

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA
The price is None.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers from Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University Yale University, Box 208281, New Haven, CT 06520-8281 USA. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Brittany Ladd (cowles@yale.edu).