@article{eb7db8e7b9e44c588ea3980b39003704,
title = "Complex Disclosure",
abstract = "We present evidence that unnecessarily complex disclosure can result from strategic incentives to shroud information. In our laboratory experiment, senders are required to report their private information truthfully but can choose how complex to make their reports. We find that senders use complex disclosure more than half the time. This obfuscation is profitable because receivers make systematic mistakes in assessing complex reports. Regression and structural analysis suggest that these mistakes could be driven by receivers who are naive about the strategic use of complexity or overconfident about their ability to process complex information.",
keywords = "complexity, disclosure, experiments, naivete, overconfidence",
author = "Jin, {Ginger Zhe} and Michael Luca and Daniel Martin",
note = "Funding Information: Early stages of this project were supported by the French National Research Agency, through the program Investissements d'Avenir [Grant ANR-10–LABX_93-01]. Part of the research was conducted when G. Jin took leave at the Federal Trade Commission. The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission or any individual commissioner. D. Martin would like to thank both the Paris School of Economics and the Camargo Foundation for their hospitality during the writing of this paper. The authors would like to thank Patrick Rooney, Byron Perpetua, and Philip Marx for excellent assistance. All rights reserved. All errors are the authors{\textquoteright}. Funding Information: History: Accepted by Yan Chen, behavioral economics and decision analysis. Funding: Early stages of this project were supported by the French National Research Agency, through the program Investissements d'Avenir [Grant ANR-10–LABX_93-01]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc .2021.4037. Publisher Copyright: Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 INFORMS",
year = "2022",
month = may,
doi = "10.1287/mnsc.2021.4037",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "68",
pages = "3236--3261",
journal = "Management Science",
issn = "0025-1909",
publisher = "INFORMS Inst.for Operations Res.and the Management Sciences",
number = "5",
}