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Acquiring Information Through Peers

American Economic Review, July 2020

joint with Bernard Herskovic

Link to Paper (SSRN)

We study how networks of informational flows are formed. We develop an endogenous network formation model, in which agents form connections to acquire information. Our model features complementarity in actions as agents care not only about accuracy of their decision making but also about the actions of other agents. In equilibrium, the information structure is a hierarchical network, and, under weakly convex cost of forming links, the equilibrium network is core-periphery. Even if agents are ex-ante identical, there is ex-post heterogeneity in payoffs and actions. Finally, we study how individual characteristics determine agents' roles in the network.

In an ongoing relationship of delegated decision making, a principal consults a biased agent to assess projects’ returns. In equilibrium, the principal allows future bad projects to reward fiscal restraint, but cannot commit to indefinite rewards. We characterize equilibrium payoffs (at fixed discounting), showing that Pareto optimal equilibria are implemented via a two-regime `Dynamic Capital Budget’. Rather than facing backloaded rewards—as in dynamic agency models with commitment power—the agent loses autonomy as time progresses.

A Road to Efficiency Through Communication and Commitment

Revise and Resubmit at AER

joint with Ala Avoyan

Link to Paper (SSRN)

We examine the efficiency gains of introducing a pre-play phase—allowing agents to communicate while incrementally committing to their words—in coordination environments. We consider a particular pre-play institution for which the efficient equilibrium is unique in the extended game, and we test the environment in the lab. We focus on weaklink games, a coordination game with multiple Pareto ranked equilibria, in which an inferior equilibrium is often observed in experimental settings. We first show that the institution intertwining communication and incremental commitment significantly increases subjects' payoffs, even when compared to rich pure communication protocols. Aligned with theoretical predictions, commitment changes the way players communicate—affecting what is a player says and, moreover, how others interpret it. Finally, we focus on the road to efficiency; we analyze agents’ dynamic behavior as they try to coordinate, and we show that this behavior is closely aligned with theoretical predictions. The results shed new light on how pre-play institutions can mitigate coordination failures and highlight communication and incremental commitment as key features.

We study a continuous-time model of partnership, with persistence and imperfect state monitoring. Partners exert private efforts to shape the stock of fundamentals, which drives the pro ts of the partnership, and the profits are the only signal they observe. The near-optimal strongly symmetric equilibria are non-Markovian and are characterized by a novel differential equation that describes the supremum of equilibrium incentives for any level of relational capital. Imperfect monitoring of the fundamentals helps sustain incentives, due to deferred incentives, and increases the partnership's value (Sand in the wheels). Good profit outcomes rally the partners to further increase effort when relational capital is low, but lead them to coast and decrease effort when relational capital is high. Even partnerships with high fundamentals may unravel after a short spell of terrible signals (Beatles' break-up).