Endogenous Timing of Actions under Conflict between Two Types of Second Mover Advantage

In a model, two players, heterogeneous in their information quality, compete with each other with perfect information about the other player's information quality. If they can decide their timings of actions endogenously, the less-informed player has an incentive to delay her action for learning. On the other hand, the more-informed player wants to delay her action to prevent her information from being revealed, not to enable her to learn. The conflict of these two types of second mover advantages yields a war of attrition. Although both players can benefit from acting as the follower, the gain from a delay for learning is greater than that for preventing the other's learning. Therefore, a cost for the delay in action plays an important role in characterizing the equilibrium. In contrast to the literature, in which only informational externalities are considered, this article shows that the introduction of payoff externalities contributes to different procedures and reasoning processes through which the heterogeneous players' timings of actions are decided endogenously.

Strategic Disclosure of Valuable Information within Competitive Environments

Can valuable information be disclosed intentionally by the informed agent even within a competitive environment? In this article, we bring our interest into the asymmetry in reward and penalty in the payoff structure and explore its effects on the strategic disclosure of valuable information. According to our results, the asymmetry in reward and penalty is a necessary condition for the disclosure of valuable information. This asymmetry also decides which quality of information is revealed for which incentive; if the penalty is larger than the reward or the reward is weakly larger than the penalty, there exists an equilibrium in which only a low quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce imitation. On the other hand, if the reward is sufficiently larger than the penalty, there exist equilibria in which either all types or only high quality type of information is revealed, in order to induce deviation. The evaluation of the equilibrium in terms of expected payoff yields that the equilibrium where valuable information is disclosed strategically dominates the equilibrium where it is concealed.

Strategic Behavior, Truthfulness and Welfare of Waiting Option in the Duopoly Forecasting Announcement Market

In this paper, we discuss the possibility of strategic behavior and truthful reporting in a two players' announcement game when there is a cost for getting information. First we show that the best strategy of each player is to announce the observed signal truthfully if the announcement is made simultaneously. Second we show that if the order of announcement is given exogenously, the player who moves first reports her information truthfully always. But the best strategy of the player who moves later depends on the information cost, the belief in the information quality and payoffs. Also we discuss what is a good scheme to induce player who moves later to observe her signal and announce truthfully. Finally, we discuss about the welfare of using the waiting option in an endogenous ordering. We show that player can be better off in terms of ex-ante compared to the simultaneous announcement case even if she uses the waiting option for delaying her decision. This is a interesting result because the possibility of waiting option is usually understood as a main reason to make player worse-off compared to the simultaneous movement case. The conditions under which each player can be better off or worse off from using the option are explained. Some results of the experiments that support our model are denoted. Some assertions in this paper can be used as an alternative explanation for the phenomenon of the coincidence or discrepancy in the sovereign credit rating or corporate credit rating market by professional analysts and the reputation marketsStrategic imitation and deviation, Optimality of waiting option, Positive and Negative Penguin effect

Strategic Information Spillover to be Imitated: Incentive to Make Use of Relative Performance Evaluation

In this article, we deal with the topic of intentional information spillover using a model in which both informational- and payoff-externalities are present and the timing of agents' actions is endogenous. In this model, three players, who are heterogeneous in the quality of their information, compete with one another in a common task. According to the results, the weakly-informed players may voluntarily relinquish an option to wait, although no cost is imposed for a delay of action. When acting without a delay, they reveal their information with the hope that others will imitate them. This type of information spillover is due to their incentive, which is to make use of the relative performance evaluation structure under which a bad reputation can be shared if others are also wrong.Blame sharing, Endogenous timing of actions, Herding, Information spillover, Informational externalities, Payoff externalities

Effects of Asymmetric Payoffs and Information Cost in Sequential Information Revelation Games

This paper explores the effects of costly information and asymmetry in reward and penalty on an agent's strategic behavior in acquiring and revealing information. Whether information is costly to acquire or not, in order to induce truthfulness in an agent's action, the penalty should not be stressed more than the reward to avoid herding or imitation. When the reward is greater than the penalty, if information is not costly, for the relatively low quality of information, the agent exhibits anti-herding. However, an equilibrium -- in which she acts truthfully for all parameters of information quality -- can be induced by managing the reward and penalty. If information is costly, within certain parameter sets of information quality, the agent exhibits deviation and imitation. Also, for the moderate quality of information, the agent acquires her information although it is costly and reveals it truthfully. The derived results can provide the reasoning behind agents' behavior trends in information revelation according to reputation and the difficulty of a given task.Asymmetry in reward and penalty, Information Cost, Truthfulness in information revelation, Herding, Anti-Herding, Imitation, Deviation

Storage and Retrieval of Thermal Light in Warm Atomic Vapor

We report slowed propagation and storage and retrieval of thermal light in warm rubidium vapor using the effect of electromagnetically-induced transparency (EIT). We first demonstrate slowed-propagation of the probe thermal light beam through an EIT medium by measuring the second-order correlation function of the light field using the Hanbury-Brown$-$Twiss interferometer. We also report an experimental study on the effect of the EIT slow-light medium on the temporal coherence of thermal light. Finally, we demonstrate the storage and retrieval of thermal light beam in the EIT medium. The direct measurement of the photon number statistics of the retrieved light field shows that the photon number statistics is preserved during the storage and retrieval process.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

NMR study on the stability of the magnetic ground state in MnCr2{}_2O4{}_4

The canting angles and fluctuation of the magnetic ion spins of spinel oxide MnCr${}_2$O${}_4$ were studied by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) at low temperatures, which has a collinear ferrimagnetic order below $T_C$ and a ferrimagnetic spiral order below $T_s < T_C$. Contrary to previous reports, only one spin canting angle of Cr ions was observed. The spin canting angles of Mn and Cr ions in the ferrimagnetic spiral obtained at a liquid-He temperature were 43\,^{\circ} and 110\,^{\circ}, respectively. The nuclear spin-spin relaxation was determined by the Suhl-Nakamura interaction at low temperatures but the relaxation rate $T_2^{-1}$ increases rapidly as the temperature approaches $T_s$. This indicates that the fluctuation of the spiral component becomes faster as the temperature increases but not fast enough to leave an averaged hyperfine field to nuclei in the time scale of nuclear spin precession in the ferrimagnetic phase, which is on the order of $10^{-8}$ s. The spiral volume fraction measured for various temperatures reveals that the collinear and the spiral ferrimagnetic phases are mixed below the transition temperature of the spiral order. The temperature hysteresis in the volume fraction implies that this transition has first-order characteristics.Comment: 13 pages, 5 figure