From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Message Hash: cfb11877e9f1c3a1e0e129299dbaecfc517b4819040d6357f4e73ef82c03f812
Message ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951121130450.19018A-100000@eskimo.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1995-11-21 22:00:34 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 06:00:34 +0800
From: Wei Dai <weidai@eskimo.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 06:00:34 +0800
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: towards a theory of reputation
Message-ID: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951121130450.19018A-100000@eskimo.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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Many of the topics discussed on this list are economic in nature.
Unfortunately cypherpunks haven't attracted the attention of professional
economists who might be willing to apply their analytic tools to these
issues. Reputation is one of these issues that is especially important.
I'm not an economist, so I hope these ramblings do not discourage real
economists from tackling reputation as a serious research project.
The first step toward a theory of reputation is defining what reputation
is. The definition should correspond closely enough to our common sense
notion of reputation so that our intuitions about it are not completely
useless. I think a good definition is this: Alice's reputation of Bob is
her expectation of the results of future interactions with Bob. If
these interactions are mainly economic in nature, then we can represent
Alice's reputation of Bob by a graph with the horizontal axis labeled
price and the vertical axis labeled expected utility. A point (x,y) on
the graph means that Alice expects to get y utils in a business transaction
where she pays Bob x dollars. Given this definition, it is natural to say
the Bob's reputation is the set of all other people's reputations of Bob.
A reputation system consists of a set of entities, each of whom has a
reputation and a method by which he changes his reputation of others.
I believe the most important question for a theory of reputation to answer
is what is a good method (reputation algorithm) by which a person changes
his reputation of others. A good reputation algorithm must serve his
self-interest; it must not be (too) costly to evaluate; its results must
be stable; a reputation system where most people use the algorithm must
be stable (i.e., the reputation system must be an evolutionarily stable
system).
In a reputation based market, each entity's reputation has three values.
First is the present value of expected future profits, given the reputation
(let's call it the operating value). Note that the entity's reputation
allows him to make positive economic profits, because it makes him a
price-maker to some extent. Second is the profit he could make if he
threw away his reputation by cheating all of his customers (throw-away
value). Third is the expected cost of recreating an equivalent reputation
if he threw away his current one (replacement cost).
Now it is clear that if a reputation's throw-away value ever exceeds its
operating value or replacement cost, its owner will, in self-interest,
throw away his reputation by cheating his customers. In a stable reputation
system, this should happen very infrequently. This property may be
difficult to achieve, however, because only the reputation's owner knows
what its values are, and they may fluctuate widely. For example the
operating value may suddenly decrease when his competitor announces
a major price cut, or the replacement cost may suddenly decrease when
he succeeds subverting a respected reputation agency.
One way to answer some of these questions may be to create a model of
a reputation system with a simple reputation algorithm and a simplified
market, and determine by analysis or simulation whether it has the
desirable properties. I hope someone who has an economist friend can
persuade him to do this.
Wei Dai
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