Collaborative Research: Social Value of Information and Coordination

本项目研究公共和私人信息如何影响具有战略互补性的经济体的均衡分配和福利。它旨在提供一个框架，以解决重要问题，例如：经济统计数据或政策制定者的公告所传播的信息的最佳透明度是什么？随着代理人私下收集更多信息，总波动性是否会降低，福利是否会改善？那么，哪些政策可能有助于通过减少非基本面波动来加强协调？主要贡献在于表明如何通过调查信息的社会价值与协调之间的关系来解决这些问题。当协调具有社会价值时，例如在具有投资互补性或需求溢出的市场中，提高公共信息的精确度会增加福利，尽管这可能会导致总体活动的更大波动。相反，当协调动机从社会角度来看没有根据时，就像最好被描述为选美比赛的资产市场的情况一样，更透明的公共信息可能会减少成本，而更准确的私人信息则会增进福利。同样，当更准确的公共信息将有助于协调应对货币危机或银行挤兑等社会不良结果的高风险时，建设性模糊是最佳的。这项研究得出的结果预计将与有关具有战略互补性的经济体(如生产、网络或需求外部性、不完全金融市场和凯恩斯摩擦)的理论和应用研究相关。预计它们还将在理解货币攻击、银行挤兑、债务危机或政治变革等危机现象方面发挥重要作用。

This project examines how public and private information affect equilibrium allocations and welfare in economies with strategic complementarities. It aims at providing a framework to address important questions such as: what is the optimal transparency in the information disseminated by economic statistics or announcements by policy makers? Does aggregate volatility decrease, and welfare improve, as agents privately collect more information? And, what policies may help enhance coordination by reducing non-fundamental volatility?The main contribution is in showing how these issues can be addressed by investigating the relationship between the social value of information and coordination. When coordination is socially valuable as in the case of markets with investment complementarities or demand spillovers, an increase in the precision of public information increases welfare despite the fact that it may lead to more volatility in aggregate activity. On the contrary, when the coordination motive is not warranted from a social perspective, as in the case of asset markets that are best described as beauty contests, more transparent public information may reducewelfare, whereas more precise private information is welfare-enhancing. Similarly, constructive ambiguity is optimal when there is a high risk that more precise public information will facilitate coordination on socially undesirable outcomes, such as a currency crisis or a bank run.The results deriving from this research are expected to be relevant for both theoretical and applied research concerning economies with strategic complementarities such as production, network or demand externalities, incomplete financial markets, and Keynesian frictions. They are also expected to play an important role in the understanding of crises phenomena, such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, or political change.