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Endogeous Monitoring

Author

Listed:
  • Michihiro Kandori
  • Ichiro Obara
Abstract
In the standard model of dynamic interaction, players are assumed to receive public signals according to some exogenous distributions for free. We deviate from this assumption in two directions to consider an aspect of information structure in a more realistic way. We assume that signals are private rather than public and that each player needs to actively monitor the other player with some costs to observe the other player's behavior. In each stage, each player decides whether to monitor the other player with some costs in addition to which action to take. We first provide a class of strategies which approximate efficiency and describe some of its interesting properties, among them are (1) each player monitors the other player randomly like "random auditing" to reduce monitoring costs and (2) players cheat and monitor at the same time in their cooperative phase. In particular, this implies that cheating may happen (randomly) during collusion for efficiency reason. Then we discuss multi-task partnership games with endogenous monitoring, where two players play H games (tasks) instead of one. The additional twist is that we allow each player to choose freely which tasks to monitor. Our main result is that, how large the monitoring cost per task is, the efficient outcome can be approximated as players become patient when there is a large enough number of tasks. This result suggests that the size of a partnership tends to be large when active monitoring is important.

Suggested Citation

  • Michihiro Kandori & Ichiro Obara, 2004. "Endogeous Monitoring," 2004 Meeting Papers 752, Society for Economic Dynamics.
  • Handle: RePEc:red:sed004:752
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Susan Athey & Kyle Bagwell & Chris Sanchirico, 2004. "Collusion and Price Rigidity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 317-349.
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    4. Jeffrey C. Ely & Johannes Hörner & Wojciech Olszewski, 2005. "Belief-Free Equilibria in Repeated Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(2), pages 377-415, March.
    5. Michihiro Kandori & Ichiro Obara, 2006. "Efficiency in Repeated Games Revisited: The Role of Private Strategies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 499-519, March.
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    11. Aoyagi, Masaki, 2002. "Collusion in Dynamic Bertrand Oligopoly with Correlated Private Signals and Communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 229-248, January.
    12. Piccione, Michele, 2002. "The Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma with Imperfect Private Monitoring," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 102(1), pages 70-83, January.
    13. Ichiro Obara, 2000. "Private Strategy and Efficiency: Repeated Partnership Games Revisited," Econometric Society World Congress 2000 Contributed Papers 1449, Econometric Society.
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    Cited by:

    1. Flesch, János & Perea, Andrés, 2009. "Repeated games with voluntary information purchase," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 126-145, May.
    2. Liu, Qingmin & Skrzypacz, Andrzej, 2014. "Limited records and reputation bubbles," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 2-29.
    3. Awaya, Yu, 2014. "Community enforcement with observation costs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 154(C), pages 173-186.
    4. Qingmin Liu, 2006. "Information Acquisition and Reputation Dynamics," Discussion Papers 06-030, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    5. Michihiro Kandori & Ichiro Obara, 2006. "Efficiency in Repeated Games Revisited: The Role of Private Strategies," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(2), pages 499-519, March.
    6. Hino, Yoshifumi, 2019. "An efficiency result in a repeated prisoner’s dilemma game under costly observation with nonpublic randomization," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 47-53.
    7. Ichiro Obara, 2004. "Efficiency in Repeated Games Revisited: The Role of Private Strategies (with M. Kandori)," UCLA Economics Online Papers 281, UCLA Department of Economics.
    8. Yasuyuki Miyahara & Tadashi Sekiguchi, 2016. "Finitely Repeated Games with Automatic and Optional Monitoring," Discussion Papers 2016-12, Kobe University, Graduate School of Business Administration.
    9. Flesch, J. & Perea ý Monsuwé, A., 2007. "Repeated games with voluntary information purchase," Research Memorandum 057, Maastricht University, Maastricht Research School of Economics of Technology and Organization (METEOR).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Private Monitoring; Monitoring Cost;

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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