We analyze a legislative bargaining game over an ideological and a distributive issue. Legislators are privately informed about their ideological positions. Communication takes place before a proposal is offered and majority rule voting determines the outcome. We compare the outcome of the...

A decision maker makes a ruling on a random case in each period. She is uncertain about the correct ruling until conducting a costly investigation. A ruling establishes a precedent, which cannot be violated under binding precedent. We compare the information acquisition incentives, the evolution...

A decision maker (DM) must address a series of problems over time. Each period, a random case arises and the DM must make a yes-or-no decision, which we call a ruling. She is uncertain about the correct ruling until she conducts a costly investigation. A ruling establishes a precedent, which may...

A principal (receiver) considers whether to accept a project whose total value depends on two aspects. In each period, an agent (sender) privately learns the value of one aspect with positive probability. We compare two common reporting protocols: frequent updating, which requires the sender to...

We introduce a "nestedness" relation for a general class of sender-receiver games and compare equilibrium properties, in particular the amount of information transmitted, across games that are nested. Roughly, game B is nested in game A if the players’s optimal actions are closer in game B. We...