Coordination-Free Equilibria in Cheap Talk Games

This paper characterizes generic equilibrium play in a multi-sender version of Crawford and Sobel\u27s (1982) cheap talk model, when robustness to a broad class of beliefs about noise in the senders\u27 observation of the state is required. Just like in the one-sender model, information transmission is partial, equilibria have an interval form, and they can be computed through a generalized version of Crawford and Sobels forward solution procedure. Fixing the senders\u27 biases, full revelation is not achievable even as the state space becomes large. Intuitive welfare predictions, such as the desirability of consulting senders with small and opposite biases, follow

Divergent Interpretation and Divergent Prediction in Communication

We consider a cheap-talk game à la Crawford and Sobel (1982) with almost-common interest players. The sender's bias parameter is only approximately common knowledge. Compared to the standard case where the structure of the bias parameter is (exactly) common knowledge, communication between the players is subject to divergent interpretation of the sender's messages by the receiver, and divergent prediction of the receiver's reaction by the sender. We show that the complementary nature of these phenomena can result in significant welfare consequences even with a \small" (in a certain sense) departure from (exact) common knowledge

Divergent Interpretation and Divergent Prediction in Communication

We consider a cheap-talk game à la Crawford and Sobel (1982) with almost-common interest players. The sender's bias parameter is only approximately common knowledge. Compared to the standard case where the structure of the bias parameter is (exactly) common knowledge, communication between the players is subject to divergent interpretation of the sender's messages by the receiver, and divergent prediction of the receiver's reaction by the sender. We show that the complementary nature of these phenomena can result in significant welfare consequences even with a \small" (in a certain sense) departure from (exact) common knowledge

Essays on Information Economics

This thesis consists of three essays on information economics. I explore how information is strategically communicated or designed by senders who aim to influence the decisions of a receiver. In the first chapter, I study a cheap talk game between two imperfectly informed experts and a decision maker. The experts receive noisy signals about the state and sequentially communicate the relevant information to the decision maker. I refine the self-serving belief system under uncertainty and Ι characterise the most informative equilibrium that might arise in such environments.In the second chapter, I consider the case where a decision maker seeks advice from a biased expert who cares also about establishing a reputation of being competent. The expert has the incentives to misreport her information but she faces a trade-off between the gain from misrepresentation and the potential reputation loss. I show that the equilibrium is fully-revealing if the expert is not too biased and not too highly reputable. If there is competition between two experts the information transmission is always improved. However, in cases where the experts are more than two the result is ambiguous, and it depends on the players’ prior belief over states.In the last chapter, I consider a model of strategic communication where a privately and imperfectly informed sender can persuade a receiver. The sender may receive favorable or unfavorable private information about her preferred state. I describe two ways that are adopted in real life situations and theoretically improve equilibrium informativeness given sender's private information. First, a policy that suggests symmetry constraints to the experiments' choice. Second, an approval strategy characterised by a low precision threshold where the receiver will accept the sender with a positive probability and a higher one where the sender will be accepted with certainty