MARC record from Internet Archive

LEADER: 03614nam 2200433Ia 4500
001 001758458
004 001758458
005 20101028072509.0
006 m d
007 cr mn|
008 101027e20090215maua bt 000 0 eng d
035 $a(OCoLC)671877328
040 $aMYG$cMYG
090 $aHB31.M415 no.09-03
100 1 $aSethi, Rajiv.
245 10 $aPublic disagreement /$c[by] Rajiv Sethi [and] Muhamet Yildiz.
260 $aCambridge, MA :$bMassachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics,$c[2009]
300 $a33 leaves :$bill. ;$c28 cm.
490 1 $aWorking paper series / Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics ;$vworking paper 09-03
500 $a"February 15, 2009."
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references (leaves 32-33).
520 3 $aMembers of different social groups often hold widely divergent public beliefs regarding the nature of the world in which they live. We develop a model that can accommodate such public disagreement, and use it to explore questions concerning the aggregation of distributed information and the consequences of social integration. The model involves heterogeneous priors, private information, and repeated communication until beliefs become public information. We show that when priors are correlated, all private information is eventually aggregated and public beliefs are identical to those arising under observable priors. When priors are independently distributed, however, some private information is never revealed and the expected value of public disagreement is greater when priors are unobservable than when they are observable. If the number of individuals is large, communication breaks down entirely in the sense that disagreement in public beliefs is approximately equal to disagreement in prior beliefs. Interpreting integration in terms of the observability of priors, we show how increases in social integration can give rise to less divergent public beliefs on average. Communication in segregated societies can cause initial biases to be amplified, and new biases to emerge where none previously existed. Even though all announcements are public and all signals equally precise, minority groups members face a disadvantage in the interpretation of public information that results in medium run beliefs that are less closely aligned with the true state. Keywords: bias, belief divergence, common prior, heterogeneous prior, deliberation. JEL Classifications: C72, C73.
530 $aAbstract in HTML and working paper for download in PDF available via World Wide Web at the Social Science Research Network.
650 0 $aBelief change.
650 0 $aDisclosure of information.
650 0 $aSocial integration.
700 1 $aYildiz, Muhamet.
710 2 $aMassachusetts Institute of Technology.$bDept. of Economics.
830 0 $aWorking paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Economics) ;$vno. 09-03.
856 41 $uhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract%5Fid=1345484$zTo download paper, go to the abstract page choose a download option
852 0 $bARC$cNOLN2$hHB31.M415 no.09-03$4Institute Archives$5Noncirculating Collection 2
852 0 $bDEW$cSTACK$hHB31.M415 no.09-03$4Dewey Library$5Stacks
852 8 $bNET$zInternet Access$h**See URL(s)$4Internet Resource
049 $aMYGG
910 $amjy101027-TR$imjy$d101027
949 0 $av$bARC$cNOLN2$o0$p39080031301291$x02$hHB31.M415 no.09-03
949 0 $4IP$ad$bDEW$cSTACK$o0$p39080033175859$x01$hHB31.M415 no.09-03
949 1 $1Internet Access$an$bNET$h**See URL(s)$o8$x02
994 $a02$bMYG