Author's School

Graduate School of Arts & Sciences

Author's Department/Program

Economics

Language

English (en)

Date of Award

1-1-2012

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Chair and Committee

John Nachbar

Abstract

The dissertation consists of the three essays about strategic communication games. Strategic communication games are costless sender-receiver games, and address the question of how much information can be credibly transmitted in equilibrium, and what kind of communication environments facilitate information transmission. Ch. 2, “Multidimensional Cheap Talk with Sequential Messages,” considers a multidimensional cheap talk game where there are two senders who share the private information, and send a message to the receiver sequentially. We suggest a notion of extended self-serving belief, and show that there exists a fully revealing equilibrium if and only if the senders have opposing-biased preferences. Ch. 3, “A Characterization of Equilibrium Set of Persuasion Games without Single Crossing Conditions,” considers a persuasion game between one sender and one receiver. The sender is a perfectly informed player, and any private information is completely verifiable. The receiver has binary alternatives. However, because the players' preferences do not satisfy the Giovannoni-Seidmann single crossing condition, full disclosure equilibrium never exists. We characterize the set of equilibria by specifying the receiver's ex ante expected utility. When mass media strategically suppress election-relevant information in order to influence public opinion, how do candidates and voters react to this media manipulation? To answer this question, Ch. 4, “Manipulated News: Electoral Competition and Mass Media,” studies a Downsian voting model including media outlets. The two candidates simultaneously announce policies, but only the media outlets observe them; the voter cannot observe. Then before voting occurs, the media outlets send news about the policies. After reading the news, the voter chooses one of the candidates. In the model with single outlet, equilibrium outcomes are distorted via the distortions in the voter's and the candidates' behaviors. As a result, the median voter theorem could fail.

Comments

Permanent URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.7936/K7Z31WQH

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