Generally, Democrats do not increase military spending, and Republicans do not raise welfare payments. Mostly, ruling politicians stick to the manifesto of their party. The current paper provides a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon that does not assume politicians or voters to be...

In this paper a persuasion game is analyzed, where "persuasion" is understood as an interested party's acquisition and transmission of information to a decision maker. The model allows for many interpretations, e.g., political lobbying or influence activities in organizations. Individuals' ex...

We examine the strategic role of information transmission in a repeated principal-agent relationship where the agent produces information that is useful to the principal. The agent values continuous employment for the principal because he makes a relationship-specific investment that can yield...

We study information transmission between informed experts and an uninformed decision-maker who only takes binary decisions. In the single expert case, we show that information transmission can only be relatively poor. Hence, even sophiscated communication games do not yield equilibria which (ex...

We propose a model in which different types of journalists have superior information to a newspaper's editor. Journalists compete for having their report published, but when writing their reports, they are uncertain about the preferences of the editor. We analyze the effects of competition and...

We compare communication about private information to communication about actions in a one- shot 2-person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing and whose contribution is unobserved, can send a message about the return or her...

We compare signaling by words and actions in a one-shot 2-person public good game with private information. The informed player, who knows the exact return from contributing, can signal by contributing first (actions) or by sending a costless message (words). Words can be about the return or...

We survey selected results on strategic information transmission. We distinguish between "cheap talk" and "persuasion". In the latter model, the informed player's message set depends on his type. As a benchmark, we first assume that the informed player sends a single message to the decision...

Asymmetric information in economic relationships often provides incentives to deceive. Previous findings show that ex ante disclosure of conflicts of interest not only fails to improve these relationships but also leads to even more deception. This study proposes that providing ex post...

We develop a framework in which: (i) a firm can have a new product tested publicly before launch; and (ii) tests vary in toughness, holding expertise fixed. Price flexibility boosts the positive impact on consumer beliefs of passing a tough test and mitigates the negative impact of failing a...