A principal delegates a sequential search in finite horizon to an agent, who bears the search cost and controls when to terminate the search. Upon termination, the search payoff is split between the principal and agent. However, only the principal can evaluate each search outcome, whose value is...

Mean-preserving contractions are critical for studying Bayesian models of information design. We introduce the class of bi-pooling policies, and the class of bi-pooling distributions as their induced distributions over posteriors. We show that every extreme point in the set of all...

We analyze a cheap-talk model in which an informed sender and an uninformed receiver engage in a finite-period communication before the receiver chooses a project. During the communication phase, the sender sends a message in each period, and the receiver then voluntarily pays money for the...

Many efficient policies imply a temporary deterioration of GDP while the benefits accrue to voters later. Such policies have a down-up characteristic. We show that voters cannot motivate politicians to invest in down-up policies by their reelection decision. The incumbent either undertakes...

I estimate a simultaneous discrete game with incomplete information where players' private information are only required to be median independent of observed states and can be correlated with observable states. This median restriction is weaker than other assumptions on players' private...

This paper considers a model of strategic information transmission with an imperfectly informed receiver and provides a simple logic by which the receiver's prior knowledge becomes an impediment to efficient communication. We show that the extent of communication is severely limited as the...

In this paper we use a model of tax competition to study the role of information sharing in common agency problems. Two national governments are assumed to compete in tax schedules for the revenues and output of a multinational firm in which only one of the governments is informed about the...

Costless pre-play communication has been shown to effectively facilitate within-group coordination. However, in competitive coordination games, such as rent-seeking contests, better within-group coordination leads to more aggressive competition and lower efficiency. We report an experiment in...