American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Information Processing and Limited Liability
American Economic Review
vol. 102,
no. 3, May 2012
(pp. 30–34)
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.Citation
Mackowiak, Bartosz, and Mirko Wiederholt. 2012. "Information Processing and Limited Liability." American Economic Review, 102 (3): 30–34. DOI: 10.1257/aer.102.3.30JEL Classification
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief
- D11 Consumer Economics: Theory
- D81 Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty