Learning is crucial to organizational decision making but often needs to be delegated. We examine a dynamic delegation problem where a principal decides on a project with uncertain profitability. A biased agent, who is initially as uninformed as the principal, privately learns the profitability...

A mediator, with no prior information and no control over the market protocol, attempts to redesign the information structure in the market by running an information intermediation mechanism with transfers that first elicits information from an agent, and then discloses information to another...

We analyze delegation of a set of decisions over time by an informed principal to a potentially biased agent. Each period the principal observes a state of the world and sends a “cheap-talk” message to the agent, who is privately informed about her bias. We focus on principal-optimal...

We consider a Sender-Receiver game in which the Sender can choose between sending a cheap-talk message, which is costless, but also not verified and a costly verified message. While the Sender knows the true state of the world, the Receiver does not have this information, but has to choose an...

Whistle-blowing is usually regarded as a way to identify abuse and wrongdoing on the part of governments and corporations. In this paper we show how, at a micro level, whistle-blowing can be used as a designer tool to prevent opportunistic behavior, that takes the form of collusion or blackmail,...

A principal decides when to exercise a real option. A biased agent influences this decision by strategically disclosing information. Committing to disclose all information with delay is the optimal way to persuade the principal to wait. Without dynamic commitment, this promise is credible only...

In this paper, I suggest a new experimental method for measuring (dis)honest information transmission. Subjects play a variant of the dictator game in which the dictator’s decision whether to lie (either to or against his advantage) or whether to be honest, when communicating private...

When the information used by a principal to monitor an agent is private, and thus non-verifiable by a third party, the principal has a credibility issue with the agent. The agent should be concerned that the principal could misrepresent the information in order to collect a monetary penalty from...