Implementing the “Wisdom of the Crowd”

We study a novel mechanism design model in which agents arrive sequentially and each in turn chooses one action from a set of actions with unknown rewards. The information revealed by the principal affects the incentives of an agent to explore and generate new information. We characterize the optimal disclosure policy of a planner whose goal is to maximizes social welfare. One interpretation for our result is the implementation of what is known as the 'wisdom of the crowd'. This topic has become more relevant with the rapid adaptation of the Internet over the past decade.