Reputation Effects of Information Sharing

Abstract

This paper analyzes a model of investment and return in an economy characterized by information asymmetry between an investor and a manager. The realized value of the uncertain state of nature is the manager’s private information. The paper first considers an economy where the manager cannot share her private information with the investor. Therefore, dividend payment is the only reputation building tool available to the manager. If the investor’s prior beliefs about the manager’s trustworthiness are sufficiently high, then the manager will return a dividend consistent with the lower possible state of nature having occurred and the investor will revise such beliefs downwards. However, if the beliefs are not so high, then the equilibrium will be mixed strategies.