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American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 3 2017

Evidence Games: Truth and Commitment

Sergiu Hart1; Ilan Kremer2; Motty Perry3

1 Department of Economics, Institute of Mathematics, and Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (e-mail: ) · 2 Department of Economics, Business School, and Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Department of Economics, University of Warwick (e-mail: ) · 3 Department of Economics, University of Warwick; Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (e-mail: )

Abstract

An evidence game is a strategic disclosure game in which an informed agent who has some pieces of verifiable evidence decides which ones to disclose to an uninformed principal who chooses a reward. The agent, regardless of his information, prefers the reward to be as high as possible. We compare the setup in which the principal chooses the reward after the evidence is disclosed to the mechanism-design setup where he can commit in advance to a reward policy, and show that under natural conditions related to the evidence structure and the inherent prominence of truth, the two setups yield the same outcome.

DOI
10.1257/aer.20150913
Volume
107
Issue
3
Pages
690-713
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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