Theoretical Economics

Journal of the Econometric Society

Edited by: Federico Echenique • ISSN (e): 1555-7561 • ISSN (print): 1933-6837

Theoretical Economics: Jul, 2024, Volume 19, Issue 3

Information transmission in persuasion models with imperfect verification

https://doi.org/10.3982/TE5578
p. 1001-1026

Francisco Silva

I study a persuasion game between a privately informed agent and a decision maker (DM) who can imperfectly verify the statements made by the agent by observing a signal that is correlated with the agent's information. I find that whether or not the DM benefits from communicating with the agent depends on whether the DM's signal and the agent's private information satisfy a weak affiliation condition. I then discuss the significance of this result to the debate over the use of self-appraisals in business. I argue that, in general, self-appraisals are only useful when the workers' abilities are multidimensional.


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