Contests with spying: A comment

The subject of the following comment is a paper by Baik and Shogren which has been published in this journal (Vol. 11, No. 3 (1995) pp. 441–451). In their game-theoretic model, Baik and Shogren connect the informational states of the agents in a way which leads to inconsistencies.     

Misperceiving the value of information in predicting the performance of others

Economic models typically allow for “free disposal” or “reversibility” of information, which implies non-negative value. Building on previous research on the “curse of knowledge” we explore situations where this might not be so. In three experiments, we document situations in which participants place positive value on information in attempting to predict the performance of uninformed others, even when acquiring that information diminishes their earnings. In the first experiment, a majority of participants choose to hire informed—rather than uninformed—agents, leading to lower earnings. In the second experiment, a significant number of participants pay for information—the solution to a puzzle—that hurts their ability to predict how many others will solve the puzzle. In the third experiment, we find that the effect is reduced with experience and feedback on the actual performance to be predicted. We discuss implications of our results for the role of information and informed decision making in economic situations. Electronic Supplementary Material Supplementary material is available in the online version of this article at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10683-006-9128-y. JEL Classification C91, D83     

Social learning with private and common values

Summary. We consider an environment where individuals sequentially choose among several actions. The payoff to an individual depends on her action choice, the state of the world, and an idiosyncratic, privately observed preference shock. Under weak conditions, as the number of individuals increases, the sequence of choices always reveals the state of the world. This contrasts with the familiar result for pure common-value environments where the state is never learned, resulting in herds or informational cascades. The medium run dynamics to convergence can be very complex and non-monotone: posterior beliefs may be concentrated on a wrong state for a long time, shifting suddenly to the correct state.Received: 6 January 2005, Revised: 5 May 2005, JEL Classification Numbers: C72, D82.Jacob K. Goeree: Correspondence toFinancial support from the National Science Foundation NSF (SBR-0098400 and SES-0079301) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is gratefully acknowledged. We thank Richard McKelvey posthumously for insights and conjectures about information aggregation that helped shape our thinking about the problem. We also acknowledge helpful comments from Kim Border, Tilman Börgers, Bogachen Celen, Luis Corchon, Matthew Jackson and seminar participants at University College London, the University of Arizona, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, the California Institute of Technology, the 2003 annual meeting of ESA in Pittsburgh, the 2003 Malaga Workshop on Social Choice and Welfare Economics, the 2003 SAET meetings in Rhodos, and the 2003 ESSET meetings in Gerzensee.     

Selection dynamics and adaptive behavior without much information

This paper uses the experimental method to investigate behavior in a coordination game when the information available to subjects is limited to their feasible choices and their experienced payoffs. In the experiment subjects converge to an absorbing state at rates that are orders of magnitude faster than reinforcement learning algorithms, but slower than under complete information. This state is very close to a mutual best response outcome. All cohorts converged to the market statistic predicted by the interior equilibrium regardless of the information conditions or the stability conditions. Eric Battalio programmed the graphical user interface. The National Science Foundation and Texas Advanced Research Program provided financial support. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Texas Advanced Research Program.     

EDGAR on the internet: The welfare effects of wider information distribution in an experimental market for risky assets

Policies such as the SEC’s Fair Disclosure Rule, and technologies such as SEC EDGAR, aim to disseminate corporate disclosures to a wider audience of investors in risky assets. In this study, we adopt an experimental approach to measure whether this wider disclosure is beneficial to these investors. Price-clearing equilibrium models based on utility maximization and non-revealing and fully-revealing prices predict that in a pure exchange economy, an arbitrary trader would prefer that no investors are informed rather than all are informed; non-revealing theory further predicts that an arbitrary trader would prefer a situation in which all traders are informed rather than half the traders are informed. These predictions can be summarized as “None > All > Half”. A laboratory study was conducted to test these predictions. Where previous studies have largely focused on information dissemination and its effects on equilibrium price and insider profits, we focus instead on traders’ expected utility, as measured by their preferences for markets in which none, half, or all traders are informed. Our experimental result contradicts the prediction and indicates “Half > None > All”, i.e. subjects favor a situation where a random half is informed. The implication is that in addition to testing predictions of price equilibrium, experiments should also be used to verify analytical welfare predictions of expected utility under different policy choices. JEL Classification D82, D53, G14, L86 This work was largely completed while this author was at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.     

基于我国证券市场羊群行为的宏观与微观策略

证券市场的羊群行为是指投资者在证券投资中模仿其他投资者决策,在股票价格波动中追涨杀跌的行为.导致我国证券市场羊群行为的原因包括宏观和微观两个层面.为此,本文从宏观和微观两个层面提出抑制羊群行为的相应策略,即培育市场理性与培育理性投资主体两项对策.具体包括:完善信息披露制度;改善证券市场供求关系;完善合理的交易制度;规范证券公司"信息串联"行为;培育理性投资者等.以此来实现改善上市公司的信息披露质量,促进证券市场效率,以减轻羊群行为之害.     

论GIS在社会经济领域中的运用

地理信息系统是一种新兴的技术工具,它不仅被应用在现代测绘、军事国防、野外数据采集等自然科学方面,而且被广泛应用在社会经济领域中,在管理和决策中具有重要的作用.随着人类获取空间数据能力的不断提高和信息技术的发展,地理信息系统的应用将提升到一个新的深度和广度,它将在国民经济信息化中发挥重要的作用.本文介绍地理信息系统的基本概念及其在经济、管理、法律等领域中的应用实例,着重强调在社会经济领域中开展地理信息系统应用研究的意义.     

会计信息与公司治理结构分析

公司治理结构与会计信息都产生于委托代理理论、契约理论和产权理论的需要,理论基础的交叉重叠使会计信息与公司治理结构具有内在的逻辑性。会计信息质量决定公司治理效率,目前由于会计信息的有效需求不足和供给质量不高导致信息供需不均衡,从而使会计信息与公司治理陷入恶性循环,本文通过剖析信息供需机制不均衡的原因,提出完善的对策和建议。     

Affection not affliction: The role of emotions in information systems and organizational change

Most IS research in both the technical/rational and socio-technical traditions ignores or marginalizes the emotionally charged behaviours through which individuals engage in, and cope with the consequences of, IS practice and associated organizational change. Even within the small body of work that engages with emotions through particular conceptual efforts, affections are often conceived as a phenomenon to be eradicated – an affliction requiring a cure. In this paper, I argue that emotions are always implicated in our lived experiences, crucially influencing how we come to our beliefs about what is good or bad, right or wrong. I draw from the theoretical work of Michel Foucault to argue for elaborating current notions of IS innovation as a moral and political struggle in which individuals’ beliefs and feelings are constantly tested. Finally, I demonstrate these ideas by reference to a case study that had considerable emotional impact, and highlight the implications for future work.     

浅析统计信息失真的原因及对策

近年来一些领域和地方的统计信息失真现象严重,极大地影响了国家决策部门的决策行为,对国民经济的有效运行带来了严重的负面影响。本文对我国统计信息失真的原因进行了剖析,进而有针对性地提出了提高统计信息质量的相应对策。