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Competition in costly talk

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  • Vaccari, Federico

Abstract

This paper studies a communication game between an uninformed decision maker and two perfectly informed senders with conflicting interests. Senders can misreport information at a cost that increases with the size of the misrepresentation. The main result concerns the characterization of equilibria with desirable properties: they always exist, are essentially unique, and are robust. Information transmission is partial in these equilibria, and persuasion occurs on the equilibrium path. By contrast, equilibria where the decision maker obtains her complete-information payoff are not robust, and hinge on beliefs with potentially undesirable properties.

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  • Vaccari, Federico, 2023. "Competition in costly talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 213(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:213:y:2023:i:c:s0022053123001369
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2023.105740
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    Cited by:

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    2. Vaccari, Federico, 2022. "Efficient Communication in Organizations," FEEM Working Papers 329583, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Multiple senders; Competition; Communication; Costly talk; Signaling; Lying;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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