Public and Private Information: An Experimental Study of Information Pooling
通过实验研究个体如何从公开信息中推断，比较理论模型与实际行为，发现实际推断效率低于理论标准，信息汇集不完全。
This paper reports on an experimental study of-the way in which individuals make inferences from publicly available information. We compare the predictions of a theoretical model of a common knowledge inference process with actual behavior. In the theoretical model, perfect Bayesians, starting with private information, take actions; an aggregate statistic is made publicly available; the individuals do optimal Bayesian updating and take new actions; and the process continues until there is a common knowledge equilibrium with complete information pooling. We find that the theoretical model roughly predicts the observed behavior, but the actual inference process is clearly less efficient than the standard of the theoretical model, and while there is some pooling, it is incomplete.