The 176th meeting jointly organized with International Public Policy Seminar
Date Friday, May 15, 2026 13:30 to 15:00
Place Zoom meeting.
Presenter Akifumi Ishihara, Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo.
Title: “Managing Strategic Communication for Monetary Transfers”
Abstract: We investigate a model of an informed expert and an uninformed decision maker, in which the expert sends cheap-talk messages and can voluntarily make monetary transfers. By strategically ignoring some advice, the decision maker can induce the expert to make transfers ascostly signalling. Consequently, fully revealing communication is not optimal for the decision maker, even when the parties have a common interest. In the canonical uniform-quadratic environment with an upwardly biased expert, we explicitly characterize an optimal equilibrium: pooling among low types and separation among high types. Comparative statics suggest that a more biased expert can make the decision maker better off by strengthening the expert's incentive to signal through transfers.