Leadership based on asymmetric information

Rational players, unconstrained by contracts or formal authority, choose to follow a better-informed leader, whose action reveals part of her information. If the leader satisfies a credibility condition, then the unique nondegenerate equilibrium solves distinct shirking and coordination problems and achieves the first best. If credibility fails, as is more likely for a large organization, then followers ignore the leader, and equilibria are very inefficient. Appointing multiple leaders, or a high-cost leader, can restore credibility. If players invest privately in information, then a leader often appears endogenously. The equilibrium concept is an original extension of sequential equilibrium to continuous states.