Seminar
The Wrong Kind of Transparency
Economics
| Speaker: | Andrea Prat, London Business School |
|---|---|
| Date: | Friday 18 October 2002 |
| Time: | 16:15 |
| Location: | Room 106 Streatam Court |
Further details
In a model of career concerns for experts, when is a principal hurt from observing more information about her agent? This paper introduces a distinction between information on the consequence of the agent's action and information directly on the agent's action. It is the latter kind that can hurt the principal by engendering conformism, which worsens both discipline and sorting. The paper identifies a necessary and suffcient condition on the agent signal structure under which transparency on action is detrimental to the principal. The paper also shows the existence of complementarities between transparency on action and transparency on consequence. The results are used to interpret existing disclosure policies in politics, corporate governance, and delegated portfolio management.