Strategic Information Asceticism: Denying Self to Deny Others

Abstract

This paper introduces strategic information asceticism. A decision maker deliberately forgoes acquiring valuable information because possessing it may enable others to obtain it through direct monitoring, leaks, or compulsory disclosure and then use it to take harmful actions such as entering her market. To prevent such competitive responses, Apple tightly limited external market testing ahead of the first iPhone, and OpenAI chose a sudden public release of ChatGPT over more extensive testing. The price of market surprise: quality suffered. Strategic information asceticism (SIA) arises when the decision maker would strictly prefer to acquire the information absent others' strategic reactions; the information is forgone because others may exploit it once it exists. SIA occurs in a two-sided strategic environment. The ascetic equilibrium holds because the decision maker’s restraint preserves uncertainty among sophisticated counterparts or unawareness among naïve ones. The analysis (i) defines SIA and distinguishes it from non-disclosure and strategic ignorance; (ii) develops a general model that yields testable comparative statics in leakage probability and opponent responsiveness; (iii) applies SIA to market testing as a canonical case; (iv) extends its application to espionage, test-optional college admissions, and (v) discusses governments countering SIA in regulatory settings. SIA differs sharply from well-known forms of information non-acquisition. It is not driven by internal costs, cognitive limitations, or preferences for ignorance. Neither does it involve selective disclosure or persuasion.