Strategic Gradual Learning and Information Transmission

Abstract

Prior to advising a decision maker, the expert needs to gather information about the state of the world. This often takes time and therefore, even if the expert's learning process is unobservable, the timing of the advice is informative in itself. If learning is strategic in that the expert can choose which inspections to perform, the timing of advice may reveal not only the amount but also the type of information available to the expert. This paper studies the expert's covert and strategic process of information acquisition and its effect on the quality of advice. The main result of this paper suggests that, even in the absence of an "objective" reason to expedite information transmission, putting the biased expert under an artificial (or "strategic") pressure, can increase the amount of transmitted information and be beneficial to both players