Cheap Talk with Multiple Experts and Uncertain Biases

Abstract

A decision maker solicits information from two partially informed experts and then makes a choice under uncertainty. The experts can be either moderately or extremely biased relative to the decision maker, which is their private information. I investigate the incentives of the experts to share their private information with the decision maker and analyze the resulting effects on information transmission. I show that it may be optimal to consult a single expert rather than two experts if the decision maker is sufficiently concerned about taking advice from extremely biased experts. In contrast to what may be expected, this result suggests that getting a second opinion may not always be helpful for decision making.

On the Bright Side of Correlation Information Transmission

“…Many existing models explain how, and under which conditions, experts with uncertain preferences might transmit information to a decision maker (See, for instance, Li andMadarasz, 2008, andKarakoç, 2022, among many others). However, most of these models assume that the experts' private information comes from independent sources.…”