Do people share opportunities?

Mohamed Belhaj (1) , Frédéric Deroïan (1) , Mathieu Faure (1)

1 AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques

A set of agents is aware of the existence of an economic opportunity, and compete for the associated prize. We study incentives to communicate about the existence of this economic opportunity to uninformed agents when the winner of the prize shares it with others, through some exogenous sharing rule. Communicating about the opportunity has two conflicting effects: it increases competition, but it can also increase the likelihood of receiving a large share of the prize. We find that, for any sharing rule, there is a minimum equilibrium, which Pareto dominates all other equilibria. We also find that under bilaterally symmetric sharing, more sharing generates more communication. We then discuss these results along several extensions.

Keywords: Rival Opportunity; Sharing Network; Communication; Investment

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences; Economics and Finance

Mohamed Belhaj, Frédéric Deroïan, Mathieu Faure. Do people share opportunities?. 2022. ⟨hal-03921232⟩