Evidence Games: Truth and Commitment
American Economic Review
vol. 107,
no. 3, March 2017
(pp. 690-713)
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.Citation
Hart, Sergiu, Ilan Kremer, and Motty Perry. 2017. "Evidence Games: Truth and Commitment." American Economic Review, 107 (3): 690-713. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20150913Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C72 Noncooperative Games
- D82 Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- K41 Litigation Process