Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/180935 
Year of Publication: 
2017
Series/Report no.: 
CSIO Working Paper No. 0140
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, employees with a security clearance, or experts with specific knowledge. This paper considers whether societies can learn about such facts when information is costly to acquire, cheap to manipulate, and produced sequentially. The answer is negative under an "asymptotic scarcity" condition pertaining to the amount of evidence available which distinguishes, for example, between reproducible scientific evidence and the evidence generated by a crime.
Subjects: 
law enforcement
herding
social learning
investigation
ethical agent
monitoring
JEL: 
B4
C73
D7
D8
K42
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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