Paging Inspector Sands: The Costs of Public Information
研究了行人倒计时信号灯这一公共信息政策，发现它虽减少行人被撞事故，却增加了汽车碰撞总数，表明隐藏信息反而可能提升社会福利。
We exploit the introduction of pedestrian countdown signals—timers that indicate when traffic lights will change—to evaluate a policy that improves the information of all market participants. We find that although countdown signals reduce the number of pedestrians struck by automobiles, they increase the number of collisions between automobiles. They also cause more collisions overall, implying that welfare gains can be attained by hiding the information from drivers. Whereas most empirical studies on the role of information in markets suggest that asymmetric information reduces welfare, we conclude that asymmetric information can, in fact, improve it.