Humans can lie strategically in order to leverage on their negotiation power. For instance, governments can claim that a "scapegoat" third party is responsible for reforms that impose higher costs on citizens, in order to make the pill sweeter. This paper analyzes such communication strategy...

Humans often lie strategically. We study this problem in an ultimatum game involving informed proposers and uninformed responders, where the former can send an unverifiable statement about their endowment. If there are some intrinsically honest proposers, a simple message game shows that the...

Continental European countries used to finance defence firms with public money. In the last few years, many governments aimed at implementing a hands-off policy towards the defence sector, which implies a gradual transition from public to private funding. This paper argues that the absence of...