Would More Information Reduce Disagreement? Theory and Applications

Disagreement is ubiquitous in society, often resulting in social conflict. Can disagreement on an issue be reduced by obtaining more information? The PI will investigate various questions related to this theme. The project beings by showing that while more information can sometimes reduce disagreement, it can also increase disagreement. The main focus is on when more information should be expected to reduce disagreement 'on average'.The second part of the project uses the results on disagreement to study problems in information economics.

The PI will develop models of persuasion, signaling, and markets with adverse selection to understand how an agent's information revelation is affected by the arrival of additional information. The additional information can be either exogenous or endogenously provided by other agents. Inter alia, new results will be obtained on how competition affects information provision.