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中的均衡分配和福利。它的目的是提供一个框架来解决一些重要问题，例如：经济统计数据或决策者公告所传播的信息的最佳透明度是什么？当代理人私下收集更多信息时，总波动率是否会下降，福利是否会改善？哪些政策可以通过减少非基本面波动来帮助加强协调？主要的贡献在于通过调查信息的社会价值与协调之间的关系，展示了如何解决这些问题。当协调具有社会价值时，如在具有投资互补性或需求溢出的市场中，提高公共信息的准确性会增加福利，尽管它可能导致总体活动的更大波动。相反，当从社会的角度来看，协调动机没有得到保证时，就像最能被描述为选美比赛的资产市场一样，更透明的公共信息可能会减少福利，而更精确的私人信息则会增加福利。同样，当存在更精确的公共信息将促进对社会不良后果（如货币危机或银行挤兑）进行协调的高风险时，建设性的模糊性是最佳的。这项研究的结果预计将对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）的理论和应用研究具有重要意义。他们还有望在理解危机现象方面发挥重要作用，如货币攻击、银行挤兑、债务危机或政治变革。

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.