On the bright side of correlation information transmission

We consider a situation in which a decision maker solicits information from two partially informed experts with uncertain biases. Experts’ private information about an underlying state might be conditionally correlated across them. We show that although correlation tightens the conditions on preferences for a truth-telling equilibrium, in the presence of uncertainty, a high level of correlation may discipline the strongly biased expert and may foster the informational content of the experts’ advice under high uncertainty about correlation. In contrast to what may be expected, it may be optimal for the decision maker to consult two experts with correlated information than consulting two experts with independent information. This result suggests that getting independent opinions may not always be helpful for decision-making.