 |
Garbling an evaluation to retain an advantage
1 : University of Malaga
(UMA)
2 : Universidad Miguel Hernandez
(UMH)
We study the effect of introducing interpersonal comparisons on the decisions made by career concerned experts. We consider competition between two experts who may differ in their initial reputation. We obtain that whereas full transmission of the experts' private information is an equilibrium when experts are homogenous, this is not necessarily the case when they are heterogenous. In this case, we identify an incentive for the stronger expert to discard her private information, aiming at garbling the evaluation of the principal to retain her advantage. In equilibrium, this expert may even completely contradict her signal and the other expert's decision.
