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American Economic Review Vol. 102 No. 3 2012

Information Processing and Limited Liability

Bartosz Maćkowiak1; Mirko Wiederholt2

1 European Central Bank, Kaiserstr. 29, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany. · 2 Department of Economics, Northwestern University, 2001 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208.

Abstract

Decision-makers often face limited liability and thus know that their loss will be bounded. We study how limited liability affects the behavior of an agent who chooses how much information to acquire and process in order to take a good decision. We find that an agent facing limited liability processes less information than an agent with unlimited liability. The informational gap between the two agents is larger in bad times than in good times and when information is more costly to process.

DOI
10.1257/aer.102.3.30
Volume
102
Issue
3
Pages
30-34
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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