Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/274038 
Year of Publication: 
2020
Series/Report no.: 
CSIO Working Paper No. 0149
Publisher: 
Northwestern University, Center for the Study of Industrial Organization (CSIO), Evanston, IL
Abstract: 
Many facts are learned through the intermediation of individuals with special access to information, such as law enforcement officers, officials with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether societies can learn about such facts when information is cheap to manipulate, produced sequentially, and these individuals are devoid of ethical motive. The answer depends on an "information attrition" condition pertaining to the amount of evidence available which distinguishes, for example, between reproducible scientific evidence and the evidence generated in a crime. Applications to institution enforcement, social cohesion, scientific progress, and historical revisionism are discussed.
Subjects: 
Mediated Learning
Information Attrition
Institution Design
Fake News
JEL: 
C7
D8
P0
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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