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In the auctions domain there is a great importance to information available to the different players. In particular, whenever the bidders' valuations of the auctioned item depend on some uncertain property of the auctioned item, e.g., its common value, the detail and completeness of the information disclosed is crucial. The information that might be disclosed can influence the identity of the winning bidder, and consequently the expected profit of the auctioneer from the auction, influencing the amount she will be willing to pay to the information provider in exchange for the information. In this context, an external information provider can be of relevance, whenever the auctioneer herself does not have the information necessary to fully disambiguate the uncertainty associated with the item (e.g., does not have the specific expertise or special equipment required for generating the information) or does not want to disclose such information for her own strategic considerations. Despite their importance in auctions, the study of profit-maximizing information providers in this domain has been limited, to date, to the price setting problem, i.e., the pricing of the information offered for sale. The choice of what information to disclose in auctions was studied only in the context of information available to the auctioneer that can possibly be disclosed to the bidders. The analysis of information disclosure by an external self-interested information provider entity, however, calls for a different analysis framework and may reveal much new insights. An example for those insights can be the one that says that although it might seem somehow counter-intuitive, there are some cases where by giving away part of the information for free, the information provider's profit (along with the profit of some other participants) can be improved.
One of the great successes of the Internet has been in reducing the inherent costs of acquiring information of all kinds. This is particularly true for information platforms of the kinds that connect users with the types of opportunities that they are potentially interested in. These platforms often, either implicitly or explicitly, guide a process of search carried out by users. For example, e-commerce platforms like eBay make it easy to search for consumer goods; Carfax.com makes it easy to search for used cars; Match.com makes it easy to search for romantic partners. The ease with which these Internet-based platforms allow users in locating relevant opportunities has led to a resurgence of research studying the theory and applications of sequential search, with the understanding that the order-of-magnitude reduction in search costs (particularly the cost of time) changes the game and necessitates new methodologies for analyzing these markets. The common scenario in most research dealing with economic search is a set of possible opportunities available to an agent from which she needs to choose only one. Therefore, this agent (mostly known as ``searcher") performs a search in order to maximize her expected profit. The searcher is interested in maximizing her overall expected profit from the process. In my research I address a model of one-sided economic search, e.g., the case in which an individual search for a job or a product. Although the individual is interested in finding the most suitable match, she also needs to take into consideration the cost (e.g., time) that is being wasted during the search. In one-sided search, information regarding opportunity quality is of great importance to the agent performing the search. I am able to demonstrate that allowing the information provider to use partial free information disclosure can push the searcher to continue the search even in cases where she did not intend to do so in the first place (i.e., without having the information disclosed). This can often lead to a higher profit for the information provider (and sometimes even for the searcher (e.g., in the case of a ``lemon" opportunity)). Furthermore, I prove a unique equilibrium structure that holds in this case.
While the study of the use in strategic information disclosure by self interested information providers in multi-agent settings exists, the focus of prior work aiming to study strategic behavior of such entities is mostly limited to dealing with rational agents. However, in many real life situations, humans (i.e., not completely rational agents) are in the role of information buyers. Therefore, an important direction that need to be studied is what is the best way to provide information when the information buyers are people. The results achieved in this case are compared to those achieved in the case where the information buyers are completely rational agents, in order to emphasize the differences between them. I am able to show that although when dealing with rational agents the information provider cannot benefit from using partial free information disclosure, this is not the case when it comes to people. When dealing with people, the fact that part of the information was disclosed for free has a positive effect on the information provider's expected profit. Interestingly, I find that although people are struggling with the calculation of the correct value of the information, and therefor in many times mistakenly choose to purchase the information, this is not the main reason for the difference between the theoretical and actual choice made. The main reason for the increase in the information provider's expected profit through free information disclosure, when selling information to people, is the fact that people fail to treat the interaction between them and the information provider as strategic.
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo
