Incomplete information is a commitment device for time consistency problems. In the context of time consistent labor income taxation privacy can lead to a Pareto superior outcome and increases the effectiveness of public education as a second best policy.

We study the role of information exchange through alliances in a framework with contestants who have binding budget limits and know their own budget limit but are incompletely informed about other contestants' budget limits. First, we solve for the Bayesian Nash equilibrium. Then we consider the...