We investigate strategic information transmission with communication error, or noise. Our main finding is that adding noise can improve welfare. With quadratic preferences and a uniform type distribution, welfare can be raised for almost every bias level by introducing a sufficiently small...

This paper analyzes multi-sender cheap talk when the state space might be restricted, either because the policy space is restricted, or the set of rationalizable policies of the receiver is not the whole space. We provide a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a fully...

The provision of public goods under asymmetric information has most often been viewed as a mechanism design problem under the aegis of an uninformed mediator. This paper focuses on institutional contexts without such mediator. Contributors privately informed on their willingness to pay...

This paper analyzes the optimal provision of incentives in a dynamic information acquisition process. In every period, the agent can acquire costly information that is relevant to the principal's decision. Each signal may or may not provide definitive evidence in favor of the good state. Neither...

We investigate situations in which agents can communicate to each other only through a chain of intermediators, for example because they have to obey institutionalized communication protocols. We assume that all involved in the communication are strategic, and might want to influence the action...

A committee decides by unanimity whether to accept the current alternative, or to continue costly search. Each alternative is described by a vector of distinct attributes, and each committee member can privately assess the quality of one attribute (her "specialty"). Preferences are heterogeneous...

A speaker attempts to persuade a listener to accept a request by presenting evidence. A persuasion rule specifies what evidence is persuasive. This paper compares static and dynamic rules. We present a single linear program (i) whose solution corresponds to the listener's optimal dynamic rule...

A two-person infinite-horizon bargaining model where one of the players may have either of two discount factors, has a multiplicity of perfect Bayesian equilibria. Introducing the slightest possibility that either player may be one of a rich variety of stationary behavioral types singles out a...

We study centralized many-to-many matching in markets where agents have private information about (vertical) characteristics that determine match values. Our analysis reveals how matching patterns reflect cross-subsidization between sides. Agents are endogenously partitioned into consumers and...

Within a framework of debt renegotiation and a priori private information, what is the role of outside and inside collateral? The literature shows that unobservability of the project’s returns implies that the high-risk borrower is more inclined to pledge outside collateral than is the...