Coarse Grades: Informing the Public by Withholding Information
研究了质量认证机构为何常向公众报告粗粒度评级（如“通过”而非具体分数），发现粗粒度能鼓励中等质量者申请认证，从而增加参与、减少公众不确定性，有时甚至通过/不通过评级提供最多信息。
Certifiers of quality often report only coarse grades to the public despite having measured quality more finely, e.g., “Pass” or “Certified” instead of “73 out of 100.” Why? We show that coarse grades result in more information being provided to the public because the coarseness encourages those of middling quality to apply for certification. Dropping exact grading in favor of the best coarse grading scheme reduces public uncertainty because the extra participation outweighs the coarser reporting. In some circumstances, the coarsest meaningful grading scheme, pass-fail grading, results in the most information.