Information gatekeepers: theory and experimental evidence

We consider a model where two adversaries can spend resources in acquiring public information about the unknown state of the world in order to influence the choice of a decision maker. We characterize the sampling strategies of the adversaries in the equilibrium of the game. We show that as the cost of information acquisition for one adversary increases, that person collects less evidence whereas the other adversary collects more evidence. We then test the results in a controlled laboratory setting. The behavior of subjects is close to the theoretical predictions. Mistakes are relatively Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00199-011-0615-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. We thank M. Castro, S.H. Chew, G. Frechette, A. Gaduh, D. Houser, E. Kamenica, S. Singhal, the Associate Editor, two referees and the audiences at the CIRANO Political Economy workshop in Montreal, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the National University of Singapore, the North American meeting of the European Science Association, the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Economics and the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies at USC for comments, Dustin Beckett for research assistance, and Chris Crabbe for developing the software. We also thank the financial support of the National Science Foundation (SES-0617820 and SES-0962802), The Social Science Experimental Laboratory at Caltech, The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the LUSK Center for Real Estate, the Office of the Provost at the University of Southern California and the Microsoft Corporation. I. Brocas · J. D. Carrillo Department of Economics, University of Southern California, 3620 S. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90089, USA I. Brocas · J. D. Carrillo CEPR, London, UK T. R. Palfrey (B) Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA e-mail: [email protected]