American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Conversations among Competitors
American Economic Review
vol. 98,
no. 5, December 2008
(pp. 2150–62)
Abstract
I develop a model of bilateral conversations in which players honestly exchange ideas with their competitors. The key to incentive compatibility is complementarity in the information structure: a player can generate a new insight only if he has access to his counterpart’s previous thoughts on a topic. I then examine a social network in which A has a conversation with B, then B has a conversation with C, and so on. Relatively underdeveloped ideas can travel long distances over the network. More valuable ideas, by contrast, tend to remain localized among small groups of agents. (JEL D83)Citation
Stein, Jeremy C. 2008. "Conversations among Competitors." American Economic Review, 98 (5): 2150–62. DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.5.2150Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief