Valuing Others’ Information under Imperfect Expectations

Springer Science and Business Media LLC - Tập 62 - Trang 335-353 - 2007
Hagen Lindstädt1
1Institute of Applied Economics and Management, Karlsruhe University (TH), Karlsruhe, Germany

Tóm tắt

Sometimes we believe that others receive harmful information. However, Marschak’s value of information framework always assigns non-negative value under expected utility: it starts from the decision maker’s beliefs – and one can never anticipate information’s harmfulness for oneself. The impact of decision makers’ capabilities to process information and of their expectations remains hidden behind the individual and subjective perspective Marschak’s framework assumes. By introducing a second decision maker as a point of reference, this paper introduces a way for evaluating others’ information from a cross-individual, imperfect expectations perspective for agents maximising expected utility. We define the cross-value of information that can become negative – then the information is “harmful” from a cross-individual perspective – and we define (mutual) cost of limited information processing capabilities and imperfect expectations as an opportunity cost from this same point of reference. The simple relationship between these two expected utility-based concepts and Marschak’s framework is shown, and we discuss evaluating short-term reactions of stock market prices to new information as an important domain of valuing others’ information.

Tài liệu tham khảo

Lindstädt H. (2001), More nonconcavities in information processing functions. Theory and Decision 51, 351–365

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Marschak J. (1954), Toward an economic theory of organization and information. In: Thrall R.M., Coombs C.H., Davis R.L. (eds), Decision Processes. Wiley, New York, pp. 187–220