[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v103y2013icp44-54.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Eliciting information from a large population

Author

Listed:
  • Kawamura, Kohei
Abstract
This paper studies information transmission in social surveys where a welfare maximizing decision maker communicates with a random sample of individuals from a large population who have heterogeneous preferences. The population distribution of preferences is unknown and has to be estimated, based on answers from the respondents. The decision maker cannot identify the true distribution of preferences even if the sample size becomes arbitrarily large, since the respondents have incentive to “exaggerate” their preferences especially as the sample size becomes larger and each respondent has weaker influence on the decision. The quality of communication with each respondent may improve as the sample size becomes smaller, and thus we identify the trade-off between the quality and quantity of communication. We show that the decision maker may prefer to sample a smaller number of individuals when the prior is weaker.

Suggested Citation

  • Kawamura, Kohei, 2013. "Eliciting information from a large population," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 44-54.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:103:y:2013:i:c:p:44-54
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.04.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272713000765
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.04.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gershkov, Alex & Szentes, Balázs, 2009. "Optimal voting schemes with costly information acquisition," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(1), pages 36-68, January.
    2. Timothy Feddersen & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 1997. "Voting Behavior and Information Aggregation in Elections with Private Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 65(5), pages 1029-1058, September.
    3. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    4. Junichiro Ishida & Takashi Shimizu, 2012. "Asking One Too Many? Why Leaders Need to Be Decisive," ISER Discussion Paper 0857, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University.
    5. Vijay Krishna & John Morgan, 2001. "A Model of Expertise," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(2), pages 747-775.
    6. Kaushik Mukhopadhaya, 2003. "Jury Size and the Free Rider Problem," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 19(1), pages 24-44, April.
    7. Gerardi, Dino & Yariv, Leeat, 2008. "Information acquisition in committees," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 62(2), pages 436-459, March.
    8. Casella, Alessandra & Gelman, Andrew, 2008. "A simple scheme to improve the efficiency of referenda," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(10-11), pages 2240-2261, October.
    9. Farrell Joseph, 1993. "Meaning and Credibility in Cheap-Talk Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 514-531, October.
    10. Wolinsky, Asher, 2002. "Eliciting information from multiple experts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 41(1), pages 141-160, October.
    11. Kohei Kawamura, 2011. "A Model of Public Consultation: Why is Binary Communication so Common?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(553), pages 819-842, June.
    12. Ottaviani, Marco & Sorensen, Peter, 2001. "Information aggregation in debate: who should speak first?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(3), pages 393-421, September.
    13. John Morgan & Phillip C. Stocken, 2008. "Information Aggregation in Polls," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 864-896, June.
    14. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    15. Michael Rothschild, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown: A Summary," NBER Chapters, in: Annals of Economic and Social Measurement, Volume 3, number 1, pages 293-294, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Rothschild, Michael, 1974. "Searching for the Lowest Price When the Distribution of Prices Is Unknown," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 689-711, July/Aug..
    17. Battaglini Marco, 2004. "Policy Advice with Imperfectly Informed Experts," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 4(1), pages 1-34, April.
    18. , & ,, 2009. "A resurrection of the Condorcet Jury Theorem," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(2), June.
    19. Jacob Goeree & Jens Großer, 2007. "Welfare Reducing Polls," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 31(1), pages 51-68, April.
    20. Nicola Persico, 2004. "Committee Design with Endogenous Information," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(1), pages 165-191.
    21. Austen-Smith David, 1993. "Interested Experts and Policy Advice: Multiple Referrals under Open Rule," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(1), pages 3-43, January.
    22. Gilligan, Thomas W & Krehbiel, Keith, 1987. "Collective Decisionmaking and Standing Committees: An Informational Rationale for Restrictive Amendment Procedures," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 3(2), pages 287-335, Fall.
    23. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Mark Thordal-Le Quement, 2016. "The (Human) Sampler's Curses," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(4), pages 115-148, November.
    2. Chiba Saori, 2020. "Vagueness of Language: Indeterminacy under Two-Dimensional State-Uncertainty," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-21, January.
    3. Bergemann, Dirk & Ottaviani, Marco, 2021. "Information Markets and Nonmarkets," CEPR Discussion Papers 16459, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    4. Junichiro Ishida & Takashi Shimizu, 2009. "Cheap Talk with an Informed Receiver," ISER Discussion Paper 0746r, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Osaka University, revised Jun 2015.
    5. Junichiro Ishida & Takashi Shimizu, 2019. "Cheap talk when the receiver has uncertain information sources," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(2), pages 303-334, September.
    6. Blume, Andreas & Lai, Ernest K. & Lim, Wooyoung, 2019. "Eliciting private information with noise: The case of randomized response," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 356-380.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dezsö Szalay & Ramon Arean, 2005. "Communicating with a Team of Experts," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 05.12, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
    2. Hongbin Cai, 2009. "Costly participation and heterogeneous preferences in informational committees," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 40(1), pages 173-189, March.
    3. Li Hao & Wing Suen, 2009. "Viewpoint: Decision-making in committees," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 42(2), pages 359-392, May.
    4. Gordon Rausser & Leo Simon & Jinhua Zhao, 2015. "Rational exaggeration and counter-exaggeration in information aggregation games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(1), pages 109-146, May.
    5. Kawamura, Kohei, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," SIRE Discussion Papers 2008-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    6. Kohei Kawamura, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series 182, Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh.
    7. Galeotti, Andrea & Ghiglino, Christian & Squintani, Francesco, 2013. "Strategic information transmission networks," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(5), pages 1751-1769.
    8. Ambrus, Attila & Lu, Shih En, 2014. "Almost fully revealing cheap talk with imperfectly informed senders," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 174-189.
    9. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    10. Gerardi, Dino & McLean, Richard & Postlewaite, Andrew, 2009. "Aggregation of expert opinions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 339-371, March.
    11. Flavia Roldán, 2013. "The organization of expertise in the presence of communication," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 17(1), pages 63-81, March.
    12. Jerome Mathis, 2006. "Deliberation with Partially Verifiable Information," THEMA Working Papers 2006-03, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    13. Alexander Lundberg, 2020. "The importance of expertise in group decisions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(3), pages 495-521, October.
    14. Ronny Razin & Gilat Levy, 2004. "Multidimentional Cheap Talk," 2004 Meeting Papers 184, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    15. Volker Hahn, 2012. "On the Optimal Size of Committees of Experts," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2012-24, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    16. Migrow, Dimitri, 2021. "Designing communication hierarchies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    17. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2020. "Appointed Learning for the Common Good: Optimal Committee Size and Efficient Rewards," CEPR Discussion Papers 15311, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Nikitas Konstantinidis, 2013. "Optimal committee design and political participation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 25(4), pages 443-466, October.
    19. Gersbach, Hans & Mamageishvili, Akaki & Tejada, Oriol, 2022. "Appointed learning for the common good: Optimal committee size and monetary transfers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 153-176.
    20. Jun Chen, 2021. "The Condorcet Jury Theorem with Information Acquisition," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-33, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:103:y:2013:i:c:p:44-54. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.