Economica Obscura
Institutions, Archives, and Policy Learning
Research question
How do institutions’ changing reporting priorities shape the archive and the policy learning available to future decision makers?
Abstract
Reporting institutions bear current collection and adjustment costs, while later users benefit from the records they leave. This paper models that information externality. Reporting directions adapt to operating priorities and generate an archive of state information. In a Gaussian benchmark, specialization can leave finite precision in a neglected direction even as precision grows in the favored direction. A planner values future policy losses as well as institutional costs; inherited precision determines when redirecting the next report is worthwhile. An archive-value payment implements the planner comparison under the stated commitment and target assumptions. A U.S. Call Report exercise evaluates the predictive contribution of an intermediate report before its contents are supplied. Prior-year acquisition scores improve loss over uniform selection, while innovation scale explains much of the gain. Forecast-loss evidence, whole-form burden measures, and the unmeasured monetary value of information enter distinct parts of the institutional interpretation.
In one sentence
Institutions optimize reports for today’s needs, but those choices determine what future researchers and policymakers can still learn.