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Working Paper
Costly Information Intermediation: Quality vs. Spillovers
We analyze information intermediaries in large economies with costly information acquisition. Intermediaries face a trade-off between quality and dissemination speed. Both altruistic policymakers and profit-maximizing monopolists optimally choose to sample limited information, increasing the number of partially informed agents and enhancing spillovers despite slower information accumulation. Altruistic information-sharing bureaus minimize fees by inducing low provider default rates, while monopolist bureaus maximize fees through higher faulty service rates. Information trade resembles a ...
Working Paper
Costly Information Intermediation as a Natural Monopoly
Many markets rely on information intermediation to sustain cooperation between large communities.We identify a key trade-off in costly information intermediation: intermediaries can create trust by incentivizing information exchange, but with too much information acquisition, intermediation becomes expensive, with a resulting high equilibrium default rate and a low fraction of agents buying this information. The particular pricing scheme and the competitive environment affect the direct and indirect costs of information transmission, represented by fees paid by consumers and the expected loss ...