We propose a positive model of empirical science in which an analyst makes a report to an audience after observing some data. Agents in the audience may differ in their beliefs or objectives, and may therefore update or act differently following a given report. We contrast the proposed model with a classical model of statistics in which the report directly determines the payoff. We identify settings in which the predictions of the proposed model differ from those of the classical model, and seem to better match practice.

A sender ranks information structures knowing that a receiver processes the information before choosing an action affecting them both. The sender and receiver may differ in their utility functions and/or prior beliefs, yielding a model of dynamic inconsistency when they represent the same individual at two points in time. I take as primitive (i) a collection of preference orderings over all information structures, indexed by menus of acts (the sender's ex ante preferences for information), and (ii) a collection of correspondences over menus of acts, indexed by signals (the receiver's signal‐contingent choice(s) from menus). I provide axiomatic representation theorems characterizing the sender as a sophisticated planner and the receiver as a Bayesian information processor, and show that all parameters can be uniquely identified from the sender's preferences for information. I also establish a series of results characterizing common priors, common utility functions, and intuitive measures of disagreement for these parameters—all in terms of the sender's preferences for information.

What incentives do governments have to negotiate trade agreements that constrain their domestic regulatory policies? We study a model in which firms design products to appeal to local consumer tastes, but their fixed costs increase with the difference between versions of their product destined for different markets. In this setting, firms' profit‐maximizing choices of product attributes are globally optimal in the absence of consumption externalities, but national governments have unilateral incentives to invoke regulatory protectionism to induce firm delocation. An efficient trade agreement requires commitments not to engage in such opportunistic behavior. A rule requiring mutual recognition of standards can be used to achieve efficiency, but one that requires only national treatment falls short. When product attributes confer local consumption externalities, an efficient trade agreement must coordinate the fine details of countries' regulatory policies.