Endogenous Information Acquisition and the Partial Announcement Policy

Abstract

We consider implementability and the welfare effects of a partial announcement policy using a model of a beauty contest where agents’ actions are strategic complements and where their decisions on public information acquisition are endogenous. The following results are obtained: i) if the authorities sell public information at a constant price, multiple equilibria emerge and a partial announcement equilibrium is unstable; ii) here exist pricing rules that ensure the uniqueness and stability of mixed strategy equilibria, which indicates that a partial announcement policy can be implemented; iii) the optimal price of public information rises as its precision increases relative to private information; iv) the optimal price is independent of the degree of strategic complementarity.