Accountability and Cheap Talk

Di Maggio, Marco (2009): Accountability and Cheap Talk.

Abstract

This paper analyzes a cheap talk model with heterogeneous receivers who are accountable for the correctness of their actions, showing that there exists a truth-revealing equilibrium. This sheds new light on the important role played by elections in shaping politicians' and, more surprisingly, advisor's behaviors in a cheap-talk setting. In deciding which message to send, the advisor is aware that he could use this message to affect the electoral outcome, the manipulation effect, or to shape the first period policy, the influence effect. When the first effect dominates the second there exists an informative equilibrium. In addition, I show that the presence of heterogeneous politicians leads to an increase in voters' welfare as a result of better-informed decisions. I allow the politician to delegate authority to the expert, showing that due to the signaling value of the politician's delegation decision, only corrupt or incompetent incumbents will delegate the second-period decision. Finally, I generalize the results in a number of different directions.

• Item Type: MPRA Paper
• Language: English
• Keywords: cheap talk, corruption, reputation, ideology.
• Subjects: D - Microeconomics > D7 - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making > D73 - Bureaucracy ; Administrative Processes in Public Organizations ; Corruption; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D83 - Search ; Learning ; Information and Knowledge ; Communication ; Belief ; Unawareness; D - Microeconomics > D8 - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty > D82 - Asymmetric and Private Information ; Mechanism Design

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