[go: up one dir, main page]
More Web Proxy on the site http://driver.im/
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/usg/econwp/201128.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

"Where Ignorance is Bliss, 'tis Folly to be Wise": Transparency in Contests

Author

Listed:
  • Denter, Philipp
  • Morgan, John
  • Sisak, Dana
Abstract
Increasingly, lobbying groups are subject to transparency requirements, obliging them to provide detailed information about their business. We study the effect this transparency policy has on the nature of lobbying competition. Under mild conditions, mandated transparency leads to an increase in wastefulness of lobbying competition and a decline in expected allocative efficiency. Hence we identify a negative side-effect of transparency policy, which also has implications for various other fields such as political campaigning or firm competition.

Suggested Citation

  • Denter, Philipp & Morgan, John & Sisak, Dana, 2011. ""Where Ignorance is Bliss, 'tis Folly to be Wise": Transparency in Contests," Economics Working Paper Series 1128, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:usg:econwp:2011:28
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ux-tauri.unisg.ch/RePEc/usg/econwp/EWP-1128.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Qiang Fu, 2006. "Endogenous timing of contest with asymmetric information," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 129(1), pages 1-23, October.
    2. Benny Moldovanu & Aner Sela, 2008. "The Optimal Allocation of Prizes in Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 615-631, Springer.
    3. Lambsdorff, Johann Graf, 2002. "Corruption and Rent-Seeking," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 113(1-2), pages 97-125, October.
    4. Kai Konrad & Wolfgang Leininger, 2007. "The generalized Stackelberg equilibrium of the all-pay auction with complete information," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(2), pages 165-174, September.
    5. Péter Eső & Balázs Szentes, 2007. "Optimal Information Disclosure in Auctions and the Handicap Auction," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(3), pages 705-731.
    6. Avinash Dixit, 2008. "Strategic Behavior in Contests," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 431-438, Springer.
    7. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 2008. "Rigging the lobbying process: An application of the all-pay auction," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Kai A. Konrad & Arye L. Hillman (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 2, pages 331-336, Springer.
    8. Nti, Kofi O, 1999. "Rent-Seeking with Asymmetric Valuations," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 98(3-4), pages 415-430, March.
    9. Michael R. Baye & Dan Kovenock & Casper G. Vries, 1996. "The all-pay auction with complete information," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 209-223, Springer.
    10. Vives, Xavier, 1984. "Duopoly information equilibrium: Cournot and bertrand," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 71-94, October.
    11. Lode Li, 1985. "Cournot Oligopoly with Information Sharing," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 16(4), pages 521-536, Winter.
    12. P. Milgrom, 2009. "What the Seller Wont Tell You: Persuasion and Disclosure in Markets," Voprosy Ekonomiki, NP Voprosy Ekonomiki, issue 3.
    13. M. Dewatripont & E. Maskin, 1995. "Contractual Contingencies and Renegotiation," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(4), pages 704-719, Winter.
    14. Kyung H. Baik & Jason F. Shogren, 2008. "Strategic Behavior in Contests: Comment," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 439-442, Springer.
    15. Andrew F. Daughety & Jennifer F. Reinganum, 2008. "Communicating quality: a unified model of disclosure and signalling," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 39(4), pages 973-989, December.
    16. Kolmar, Martin & Rommeswinkel, Hendrik, 2013. "Contests with group-specific public goods and complementarities in efforts," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 9-22.
    17. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    18. Morgan, John & Vardy, Felix, 2007. "The value of commitment in contests and tournaments when observation is costly," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(2), pages 326-338, August.
    19. Arye L. Hillman & John G. Riley, 1989. "Politically Contestable Rents And Transfers," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 17-39, March.
    20. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    21. Boyan Jovanovic, 1982. "Truthful Disclosure of Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 13(1), pages 36-44, Spring.
    22. Anke Kessler, 1998. "The Value of Ignorance," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 29(2), pages 339-354, Summer.
    23. Joan Esteban & Debraj Ray, 2008. "Collective Action and the Group Size Paradox," Springer Books, in: Roger D. Congleton & Arye L. Hillman & Kai A. Konrad (ed.), 40 Years of Research on Rent Seeking 1, pages 379-388, Springer.
    24. Barros, Fatima, 1997. "Asymmetric information as a commitment in oligopoly," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 207-225, February.
    25. Kyung Hwan Baik & Shogren, Jason F., 1995. "Contests with spying," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 11(3), pages 441-451, September.
    26. Alison J. Kirby, 1988. "Trade Associations as Information Exchange Mechanisms," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 19(1), pages 138-146, Spring.
    27. Nicola Persico, 2000. "Information Acquisition in Auctions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(1), pages 135-148, January.
    28. Leininger, Wolfgang, 1993. "More Efficient Rent-Seeking--A Munchhausen Solution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 75(1), pages 43-62, January.
    29. Hurley, Terrance M. & Shogren, Jason F., 1998. "Effort levels in a Cournot Nash contest with asymmetric information," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 195-210, June.
    30. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 1997. "An Analysis of the War of Attrition and the All-Pay Auction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 72(2), pages 343-362, February.
    31. Xavier Vives, 1990. "Trade Association Disclosure Rules, Incentives to Share Information, and Welfare," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 21(3), pages 409-430, Autumn.
    32. Dan Kovenock & Florian Morath & Johannes Münster, 2015. "Information Sharing in Contests," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 570-596, September.
    33. Morgan, John, 2003. "Sequential Contests," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 116(1-2), pages 1-18, July.
    34. Carl Shapiro, 1986. "Exchange of Cost Information in Oligopoly," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(3), pages 433-446.
    35. Potters, Jan & van Winden, Frans, 1992. "Lobbying and Asymmetric Information," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 74(3), pages 269-292, October.
    36. Martin Kolmar & Hendrik Rommeswinkel, 2010. "Group Contests with Complementarities in Efforts," CESifo Working Paper Series 3136, CESifo.
    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. Alejandro Melo Ponce, 2018. "The Secret Behind The Tortoise and the Hare: Information Design in Contests," 2018 Papers pme809, Job Market Papers.
    2. Philipp Denter & Dana Sisak, 2010. ""Who's the thief?": Asymmetric Information and the Creation of Property Rights," University of St. Gallen Department of Economics working paper series 2010 2010-27, Department of Economics, University of St. Gallen.
    3. Dan Kovenock & Florian Morath & Johannes Münster, 2015. "Information Sharing in Contests," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 570-596, September.
    4. Fu, Qiang & Jiao, Qian & Lu, Jingfeng, 2014. "Disclosure policy in a multi-prize all-pay auction with stochastic abilities," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 376-380.
    5. Ezra Einy & Diego Moreno & Benyamin Shitovitz, 2017. "The value of public information in common-value Tullock contests," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 63(4), pages 925-942, April.
    6. Christian Ewerhart & Federico Quartieri, 2020. "Unique equilibrium in contests with incomplete information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(1), pages 243-271, July.
    7. Denter, Philipp & Sisak, Dana, 2015. "Do polls create momentum in political competition?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 1-14.
    8. Marco Serena, 2017. "Harnessing Beliefs to Stimulate Efforts; on the Optimal Disclosure Policy in Contests," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2018-11, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    9. Denter, Philipp & Sisak, Dana, 2013. "Do Polls Create Momentum in Political Campaigns?," Economics Working Paper Series 1326, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    10. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Winner-Take-All Tournaments," CEPR Discussion Papers 12067, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Zara Sharif & Otto H. Swank, 2019. "Do More Powerful Interest Groups Have a Disproportionate Influence on Policy?," De Economist, Springer, vol. 167(2), pages 127-143, June.
    12. Philipp Denter & Dana Sisak, 2015. "The fragility of deterrence in conflicts," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 27(1), pages 43-57, January.
    13. Baumann, Florian & Denter, Philipp & Friehe, Tim, 2013. "Hide or show? Endogenous observability of private precautions against crime when property value is private information," DICE Discussion Papers 115, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    14. Marco Serena, 2022. "Harnessing beliefs to optimally disclose contestants’ types," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 74(3), pages 763-792, October.
    15. Dmitry Ryvkin & Mikhail Drugov, 2017. "Tournaments," Working Papers wp2017_03_02, Department of Economics, Florida State University.
    16. Christian Ewerhart & Julia Lareida, 2018. "Voluntary disclosure in asymmetric contests," ECON - Working Papers 279, Department of Economics - University of Zurich, revised Jul 2023.

    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. Kyung Hwan Baik & Jong Hwa Lee, 2013. "Endogenous Timing In Contests With Delegation," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 51(4), pages 2044-2055, October.
    2. Konrad, Kai A., 2007. "Strategy in contests: an introduction [Strategie in Turnieren – eine Einführung]," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Processes and Governance SP II 2007-01, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    3. Ella Segev & Aner Sela, 2014. "Sequential all-pay auctions with head starts," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(4), pages 893-923, December.
    4. Ella Segev & Aner Sela, 2011. "Sequential All-Pay Auctions with Head Starts and Noisy Outputs," Working Papers 1106, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Department of Economics.
    5. Szymanski, Stefan & Valletti, Tommaso M., 2005. "Incentive effects of second prizes," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 21(2), pages 467-481, June.
    6. Hoffmann, Magnus & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2012. "Endogenous timing in general rent-seeking and conflict models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 168-184.
    7. Pau Balart & Sabine Flamand & Oliver Gürtler & Orestis Troumpounis, 2018. "Sequential choice of sharing rules in collective contests," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 20(5), pages 703-724, October.
    8. Fu, Qiang & Gürtler, Oliver & Münster, Johannes, 2013. "Communication and commitment in contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 1-19.
    9. Florian Morath & Johannes Münster, 2013. "Information acquisition in conflicts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(1), pages 99-129, September.
    10. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    11. Baik, Kyung Hwan, 1998. "Difference-form contest success functions and effort levels in contests," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 685-701, November.
    12. Sela, Aner, 2023. "Two-stage elimination games," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    13. Karl Wärneryd, 2012. "Multi-player contests with asymmetric information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(2), pages 277-287, October.
    14. Hoffmann, Magnus & Rota-Graziosi, Grégoire, 2012. "Endogenous timing in general rent-seeking and conflict models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 168-184.
    15. Baik, Kyung Hwan & Jung, Hanjoon Michael, 2021. "Contests with multiple alternative prizes: Public-good/bad prizes and externalities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 103-116.
    16. Lian Jian & Zheng Li & Tracy Xiao Liu, 2017. "Simultaneous versus sequential all-pay auctions: an experimental study," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(3), pages 648-669, September.
    17. Nava Kahana & Doron Klunover, 2017. "Sequential Lottery Contests with Multiple Participants," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2017-02, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    18. Florian Baumann & Tim Friehe, 2013. "A note on the timing of investments in litigation contests," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 313-326, June.
    19. Baumann, Florian & Denter, Philipp & Friehe, Tim, 2013. "Hide or show? Endogenous observability of private precautions against crime when property value is private information," DICE Discussion Papers 115, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    20. Segev, Ella & Sela, Aner, 2014. "Multi-stage sequential all-pay auctions," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 371-382.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transparency Policy; Rent-seeking Contests; Information Disclosure; Value of Ignorance;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • L12 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Monopoly; Monopolization Strategies

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:usg:econwp:2011:28. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/vwasgch.html .

    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.