What is a good reputation? Career concerns with heterogeneous audiences

Abstract

When an agent faces audiences with heterogeneous preferences, it is non-trivial to determine what a “good” reputation means, and the return to reputation can be a non-monotonic function. We illustrate this through standard IO examples, and discuss some implications for reputation-building in a simple two-period career concerns framework. We conclude by discussing other observations concerning the impact of heterogeneous audiences on reputation-building.