Using trust games, we study how promises and messages are used to build new trust where it did not previously exist and to rebuild damaged trust. In these games, trustees made non-binding promises of investment-contingent returns, then investors decided whether to invest, and finally trustees...

We model an interaction between an informed sender and an uninformed receiver. Like the classic cheap talk setup, the informed player sends a message to an uninformed receiver who is to take an action which affects the payoffs of both players. However, unlike the classic cheap talk setup, the...

Language is an imperfect and uneven means of communicating information about a complex and nuanced world. We run an experimental investigation of a setting in which the messages available to the sender imperfectly describe the state of the world, however the sender can improve communication, at...

Crawford and Sobel (1982) developed a model of strategic information transmission in which a better-informed sender sends a possibly informative signal to a decision-making receiver and studied how strategically transmitted information is related to the analogy between the two players'...

We model a game similar to the interaction between an academic advisor and advisee. Like the classic cheap talk setup, an informed player sends information to an uninformed receiver who is to take an action which affects the payoffs of both sender and receiver. However, unlike the classic cheap...

This paper analyzes a cheap talk model with heterogeneous receivers who are accountable for the correctness of their actions, showing that there exists a truth-revealing equilibrium. This sheds new light on the important role played by elections in shaping politicians' and, more surprisingly,...

Language is an imperfect and coarse means of communicating information about a complex and nuanced world. We run an experimental investigation of a setting in which the messages available to the sender imperfectly describe the state of the world, however the sender can improve communication, at...

Demichelis and Weibull (2008 AER) show that adding lexicographic lying costs to coordination games with cheap talk yields a sharp prediction: only the efficient outcome is evolutionarily stable. I demonstrate that this result is caused by the discontinuity of preferences, rather than by small...

High profile cases of exploitative labor practices have increased concerns over agricultural working conditions. However, it is unclear whether and to what extent the public is willing to trade-off fair working conditions for higher prices and food imports. We implement a large-scale survey to...

We model an interaction between an informed sender and an uninformed receiver. As in the classic cheap talk setup, the informed player sends a message to an uninformed receiver who is to take an action which affects the payoffs of both players. However, in our model the sender can communicate...