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Econometrica Vol. 90 No. 1 2022

Dynamically Aggregating Diverse Information

Annie Liang1; Xiaosheng Mu2; Vasilis Syrgkanis3

1 Department of Economics and Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University · 2 Department of Economics Princeton University · 3 Microsoft Research

open access

Abstract

An agent has access to multiple information sources, each modeled as a Brownian motion whose drift provides information about a different component of an unknown Gaussian state. Information is acquired continuously—where the agent chooses both which sources to sample from, and also how to allocate attention across them—until an endogenously chosen time, at which point a decision is taken. We demonstrate conditions on the agent's prior belief under which it is possible to exactly characterize the optimal information acquisition strategy. We then apply this characterization to derive new results regarding: (1) endogenous information acquisition for binary choice, (2) the dynamic consequences of attention manipulation, and (3) strategic information provision by biased news sources.

DOI
10.3982/ecta18324
Volume
90
Issue
1
Pages
47-80
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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