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Competing for attention: is the showiest also the best?

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posted on 2023-06-09, 08:42 authored by Paola Manzini, Marco Mariotti
There are many situations in which alternatives ranked by quality wish to be chosen and compete for the imperfect attention of a chooser by selecting their own salience. The chooser may be "tricked" into choosing more salient but inferior alternatives. We investigate when competitive forces ensure instead that (strictly) higher salience is diagnostic of (strictly) higher quality, and the most frequently chosen alternative is the best one. We prove that the structure of externalities in the technology of salience is key. Broadly speaking, positive externalities in salience favour correlation between quality and salience.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Accepted version

Journal

Economic Journal

ISSN

0013-0133

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Issue

609

Volume

128

Page range

827-844

Department affiliated with

  • Economics Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2017-11-07

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2019-04-26

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2017-11-07

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