We experimentally study the strategic transmission of information in a setting where both cheap talk and money can be used for communication purposes. Theoretically a large number of equilibria exist side by side, in which senders either use costless messages, money, or a combination of the two....

We present a simple, finite-state search model to understand how the cross-sectional distribution of money affects its value. We first document a network effect: the value of a given unit of money is higher when its distribution is even, rather than skewed. We also find some distributions to be...