Confidence and Competence in Communication

This paper studies information transmission between an uninformed decision maker (receiver) and an informed player (sender) who have asymmetric beliefs ("confidence") on the sender’s ability ("competence") to observe the state of nature. We find that an overconfident sender’s message is more accurate when his information closer to the prior expectation, whereas an underconfident sender’s message is more accurate when his information is further away from the prior. Moreover, an underconfident sender may prefer to stay out of communication. Both severe overconfidence and severe underconfidence may lead to the use of binary communication (e.g. "yes or no"). We also examine how confidence in communication interacts with an intrinsic "bias" of the sender. We show that slight overconfidence on the sender’s side can always (weakly) increase information transmission when he is biased, while this is not the case for underconfidence

Constrained Communication with Multiple Agents: Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Public Good Provision

This paper studies information transmission subject to anonymity requirements and communication in public good provision without transfers. The structure of informative equilibria under anonymity or in public good provision can di¤er substantially from that of direct one-to-one communication, and in particular we distinguish i) informational distortion caused by the intrinsic divergence of preferences between the decision maker and each agent; and ii) informational distortion caused by the decision maker's weak response to each agent's message due to the equal treatment of all agents that results from anonymity or the nature of public goods. We examine the interaction between these two types of distortion and demonstrate that they may partly offset one another. Information transmission and welfare can be enhanced by introducing the second type of distortion through anonymity when the first type of distortion is severe. In public good provision where the intrinsic preference divergence between the utilitarian decision maker and each agent is absent, as the number of agents becomes larger the quality of communication diminishes and informative equilibria converge to the one that can be played by letting each agent report a binary message (e.g. "yes" or "no") even if their preferences and the decision are continuous.Cheap Talk, Anonymous Communication, Equal Treatment, Public Good Provision.

Inequality, Happiness and Relative Concerns: What Actually is their Relationship?

This paper studies information transmission between multiple agents with different preferences and a welfare maximizing decision maker who chooses the quality or quantity of a public good (e.g. provision of public health service; carbon emissions policy; pace of lectures in a classroom) that is consumed by all of them. Communication in such circumstances su¤ers from the agents. incentive to "exaggerate" their preferences relative to the average of the other agents, since the decision maker's reaction to each agent's message is weaker than in one-to-one communication. As the number of agents becomes larger the quality of information transmission diminishes. The use of binary messages (e.g. "yes" or "no") is shown to be a robust mode of communication when the main source of informational distortion is exaggeration.: Communication, Public Good Provision, Cheap Talk, Committee, Non-binding Referendum

Managerial Control inside the Firm

This paper proposes an implicit control mechanism of managers inside the firm. We argue that the need to motivate workers may make it beneficial for a self-interested, short-sighted manager to pursue long-run viability of the firm. When the firm is in a stable environment, this implicit control mechanism may not contradict shareholder value maximization. However, when the firm needs restructuring, this mechanism damages firm value. We discuss when external governance is desirable, and when it is not. Our model also offers economic explanations for some related issues in managerial behavior such as restructuring aversion, survival motive, and excessive risk aversion.

Noisy Talk

We examine the possibilities for communication between agents with divergent preferences in a noisy environment. Taking Crawford and Sobel’s [4] (noiseless) communication game as a reference point, we study a model in which there is a probability e ? (0, 1) that the received message is a random draw from the entire message space, independent of the actual message sent by the sender. Just as in the CS model, we find that all equilibria are interval partitional; but unlike in CS, coding (the proportion of the message space used by any given set of types) is of critical importance. Via the appropriate coding scheme, one can construct equilibria that induce finitely many, a countable infinity or even an uncountable infinity of actions. Furthermore, for a given number of actions, there is typically a continuum of equilibria that induce that many actions. Surprisingly, the possibility of error can improve the prospects for communication. We show that for small noise levels there is a simple class of equilibria that are almost always welfare superior to the best CS equilibrium. There exists an optimal noise level for which these equilibria achieve the efficiency bound for general communication devices. Furthermore, for a range of biases introducing any amount of noise can be beneficial.Communication, information transmission, cheap talk, noise.

Noisy talk

We investigate strategic information transmission with communication error, or noise. Our main finding is that adding noise can improve welfare. With quadratic preferences and a uniform type distribution, welfare can be raised for almost every bias level by introducing a sufficiently small amount of noise. Furthermore, there exists a level of noise that makes it possible to achieve the best payoff that can be obtained by means of any communication device. As in the model without noise, equilibria are interval partitional; with noise, however, coding (the measure of the message space used by each interval of the equilibrium partition of the type space) becomes critically important.Communication, information transmission, cheap talk, noise

Constrained Communication with Multiple Agents: Anonymity, Equal Treatment, and Public Good Provision

This paper studies information transmission subject to anonymity requirements and communication in public good provision without transfers. The structure of informative equilibria under anonymity or in public good provision can di¤er substantially from that of direct one-to-one communication, and in particular we distinguish i) informational distortion caused by the intrinsic divergence of preferences between the decision maker and each agent; and ii) informational distortion caused by the decision maker’s weak response to each agent’s message due to the equal treatment of all agents that results from anonymity or the nature of public goods. We examine the interaction between these two types of distortion and demonstrate that they may partly o¤set one another. Information transmission and welfare can be enhanced by introducing the second type of distortion through anonymity when the …rst type of distortion is severe. In public good provision where the intrinsic preference divergence between the utilitarian decision maker and each agent is absent, as the number of agents becomes larger the quality of communication diminishes and informative equilibria converge to the one that can be played by letting each agent report a binary message (e.g. "yes " or "no") even if their preferences and the decision are continuous

Communication for Public Goods

This paper studies inforfferent preferences and a welfare maximizing decision maker who chooses the quality or quantity of a public good (e.g. provision of public health service; carbon emissions policy; pace of lectures in a classroom) that is consumed by all of them. Communication in such circumstances su¤ffers from the agents incentive to "exaggerate" their preferences relative to the average of the other agents, since the decision makers reaction to each agents message is weaker than in one-to-one communication. As the number of agents becomes larger the quality of information transmission diminishes. The use of binary messages (e.g. "yes " or "no") is shown to be a robust mode of communication when the main source of informational distortion is exaggeration