Saved in:
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Recurso digital |
| Language: | |
| Published: |
Zenodo
2026
|
| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19559992 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
Table of Contents:
- <p>---<br>PRIORITY FILING - INITIAL DRAFT<br>A fully revised and formatted version will follow.<br>---</p> <p>**The Information Content of Non-Disclosure**</p> <p>**Silence as Signal in Structured Judgment Markets**</p> <p>Gregory Caldwell Beier<br>Susarb LLC, Cambridge, Massachusetts<br>March 19, 2026</p> <p>From the Prolegomena to the Unification of Economics, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics by Gregory Caldwell Beier (forthcoming 2026).</p> <p>© 2026 Gregory Caldwell Beier. Licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.</p> <p>**Abstract**</p> <p>In a market where disclosure is voluntary and scored against outcomes, the decision not to disclose carries information. An agent who has operated in a domain for five years without building a track record in constraint assessment reveals something about their calibration quality in that domain - either they lack the expertise to produce assessments worth scoring, or they lack confidence that their assessments would score well, or both. This paper develops the economics of silence in structured judgment markets. The analysis is distinct from Milgrom's (1981) unraveling result, where silence about a specific fact implies bad news about that fact, and from Dye's (1985) model, where non-disclosure is explained by the cost of producing disclosable information. In the Disclosure Incentive framework (Beier, 2026b), silence about an entire domain - not withholding a specific assessment but having no track record at all in a constraint area - implies something about the agent's type that the market can read and price. The companion paper on incentive compatibility (Beier, 2026r) establishes that agents above the calibration threshold q* find honest comprehensive disclosure optimal. Agents who remain silent in a domain where disclosure is feasible and incentivized are thereby revealed to fall below the threshold - not with certainty, but with a probability that principals can estimate from the population distribution of calibration quality and the disclosure participation rate. Silence is informative precisely because disclosure is incentivized: when good agents have reason to speak, the decision to remain quiet is itself a signal.</p> <p>**Keywords:** silence, non-disclosure, unraveling, signaling, track records, calibration, adverse selection, judgment markets, voluntary disclosure</p> <p>**JEL Codes:** D82, D83, G14, D86</p>