Public and Private Information: An Experimental Study of Information Pooling
- Creators
- McKelvey, Richard D.
- Page, Talbot
Abstract
This paper reports on an experimental study of-the way in which individuals make inferences from publicly available information. We compare the predictions of a theoretical model of a common knowledge inference process with actual behavior. In the theoretical model, "perfect Bayesians," starting with private information, take actions; an aggregate statistic is made publicly available; the individuals do optimal Bayesian updating and take new actions; and the process continues until there is a common knowledge equilibrium with complete information pooling. We find that the theoretical model roughly predicts the observed behavior, but the actual inference process is clearly less efficient than the standard of the theoretical model, and while there is some pooling, it is incomplete.
Additional Information
Published as McKelvey, Richard D., and Talbot Page. "Public and private information: An experimental study of information pooling." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1990): 1321-1339.Attached Files
Submitted - sswp696.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 81147
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170905-141058732
- Created
-
2017-09-05Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Social Science Working Papers
- Series Name
- Social Science Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 696