Date of Award

Spring 2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Economics

First Advisor

Samuelson, Larry

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three independent essays that examine how to improveinformation transmission and how to incentivize learning. In Chapter 2, I study the role of a recommender’s career concerns in his relation-ship with a consumer when the recommender has a private type in expertise. An informed type has valuable expertise for the consumer, whereas an uninformed type does not. The uninformed type cannot mimic the informed type, suggesting that the informed type can build a reputation for competence. However, I find that the relationship breaks down completely if the recommender is sufficiently patient. In Chapter 3, which is co-authored with Florian Ederer, we embed probabilisticlie detection in a standard model of Bayesian persuasion. We show that the Sender lies more when the lie detection probability increases. Moreover, the Sender’s and the Receiver’s equilibrium payoffs are unaffected by a weak lie detection technology because the Sender compensates by lying more. In Chapter 4, I analyze optimal contracting for experimentation when the agent who experiments and the principal who provides incentives agree to disagree over the quality of the project. If efforts are contractible, the principal prefers to reward good outcomes (efforts) exclusively for a more (less) optimistic agent. Moreover, longer experimentation is sustained with non-common prior. If efforts are not contractible, the optimal duration of experimentation is increasing in the agent’s confidence.

COinS