Reputation and Survival: Learning in a Dynamic Signalling Model

We consider the impact of reputation on the survival of a monopolist selling single units in discrete time periods, whose quality is learned slowly. If the seller learns her own quality at the same rate as customers, a sufficiently bad run of luck could induce her to stop selling. When she knows her quality, a good seller never stops selling though at low reputations a bad seller does with some probability. Furthermore, a seller with positive, though imperfect, information sells for the same number of periods whether her information is private or public. We further consider the robustness of the central result when the seller's opportunities for strategic behaviour are limited.     

Recruitment,Training, and Career Concerns

We examine training and recruitment policies in a two‐period model that nests two forms of production, “routine” work where ability and effort are substitutes and “creative” work where they are complements. Alternative ways of improving average ability have opposite implications for agents' career concerns. Although teaching to the top (training complementary to ability) or identifying star performers increases agents' career concerns, teaching to the bottom has the opposite effect. The paper also makes more general comments relating to models of reputation.     

Information Gathering Externalities for a Multi‐Attribute Good

Most goods and services vary in numerous dimensions. Customers choose to acquire information to assess some characteristics and not others. Their choices affect firms' incentives to invest in quality and so lead to indirect externalities in consumers' choices. We characterize a model in which a monopolist invests in the quality of a product with two characteristics, and consumers are heterogeneous ex‐ante. Consumers do not internalize their influence on the firm's investment incentives when choosing which information to acquire. Cheaper information affects consumers' information gathering and thereby firm investment. This can paradoxically reduce consumer surplus, profits, and welfare.     

Information Gathering and Marketing

Consumers have only partial knowledge before making a purchase decision, but can acquire more‐detailed information. Marketing makes it easier or harder for these consumers to do so. When consumers are ex ante heterogeneous, the firm might choose an intermediate marketing strategy for two quite different reasons. First, as a nonprice means of discrimination—it can make information only partially available, in a way that induces some, but not all, consumers to acquire the information. Second, when the firm cannot commit to a given investment in ensuring quality, the marketing and pricing strategy can act as a commitment device.     

Specialized Careers

An agent has different abilities in two types of tasks. These tasks are revealed over time through his performance. The agent initially decides whether to engage in only one task (specialize) or to take on any task that arises (be a generalist). This decision trades off the cost of being idle against staying available for relatively lucrative tasks. We compare specializing with acting as a generalist in an infinite‐horizon model and provide complete characterizations of efforts. We show how specializing acts as a means of committing to exert more effort. In a two‐period version of the model, this implies that positive costs for switching strategies, through license fees, for example, may be socially desirable.     

Something to prove: reputation in teams

Agents work for their own reputations when young but for their firms' when old. An individual with an established reputation cannot credibly commit to exerting effort when working alone. However, by hiring and working with juniors of uncertain reputation, seniors will have incentives to exert effort. Incentives for young agents arise from a concern for their own reputation (and the opportunity to take over the firm), whereas older agents work for the reputation of their firms (and the opportunity to sell out to juniors). Thus, the article explains the choice to work in teams. It also exemplifies how type uncertainty in reputation models may be endogenously and strategically introduced.     

Ratings quality over the business cycle

Credit rating agencies (CRAs) have long held that reputational concerns discipline their behavior. The value of reputation, however, depends on economic fundamentals that vary over the business cycle. In a model of ratings incorporating endogenous reputation and a market environment that varies, we find that ratings quality is countercyclical. Specifically, a CRA is more likely to issue less-accurate ratings when fee-income is high, competition in the labor market for analysts is tough, and securities' default probabilities are low. Persistence in economic conditions can diminish our results, while mean reversion exacerbates them. The presence of naive investors reduces overall quality, but quality remains countercyclical. Finally, we demonstrate that competition among CRAs yields similar results.