Re: poly: How to buy shared secrets cheap

Alexander Chislenko writes:
>It looks like it makes sense for each agent to assure others that
>he doesn't sell secrets cheaply. One way to do it would be to play
>multiple games with different partners, and have all agents keep
>track in which games the secrets were revealed cheaply. Then the
>reputation of each player would be calculated as an average sale
>price of all games where this agent played. This would give all
>agents incentives not to sell secrets cheaply.

This requires that groups that have secrets reliably and credibly
publish the fact that they have secrets, and whether or not those
secrets are ever revealed to "snoops". Seems hard to me.

Most groups with secrets would rather not admit that fact, and groups
whose secrets have been revealed to someone, but not everyone, often
would rather not admit that fact.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614
Received on Mon Mar 2 21:56:25 1998