Reputation, Risk, and Visibility

When does reputation make experts play it safe, and what policy reverses that? I isolate a single lever - visibility of outcomes. In a two-page model with binary signals and outcomes, I show: (i) with an uninformative safe option and symmetric visibility, career concerns alone do not generate conservatism; (ii) increasing failure visibility (as in Registered Reports) weakens high-reputation caution and relaxes selection. I provide a necessary-and-sufficient local sign test, agnostic about utility curvature and allowing informative safe actions, and an identification map suitable for staggered RR adoption.

Publication Details

Journal
ArXiv.org
Published
2025-09-04
Primary Topic
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
Type
article
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article

Reputation, Risk, and Visibility

ArXiv.org
Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
article

Reputation, Risk, and Visibility

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Abstract

When does reputation make experts play it safe, and what policy reverses that? I isolate a single lever - visibility of outcomes. In a two-page model with binary signals and outcomes, I show: (i) with an uninformative safe option and symmetric visibility, career concerns alone do not generate conservatism; (ii) increasing failure visibility (as in Registered Reports) weakens high-reputation caution and relaxes selection. I provide a necessary-and-sufficient local sign test, agnostic about utility curvature and allowing informative safe actions, and an identification map suitable for staggered RR adoption.

ArXiv.org
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Geochemistry and Geologic Mapping
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Reputation, Risk, and Visibility · ArXiv.org (2025) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS