Evolving influence: Mitigating extreme conflicts of interest in advisory relationships

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Boleslavsky, Raphael; Lewis, Tracy R.
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2016.05.005
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 110-134
• 关键词: Advocacy; Multi-period delegation; Long-term advisory relationship; Influence

摘要

An advocate for a special interest provides advice to a planner, who subsequently makes a sequence of decisions. The advocate is interested only in advancing his cause and will distort his advice to manipulate the planner's choices. Each time she acts the planner observes the result, providing a signal that corroborates or contradicts the advocate's recommendation. Without commitment, no influential communication takes place. With commitment, the planner can exploit the information that is revealed over time to mitigate the advocate's incentive to lie. We derive the optimal mechanism for eliciting advice, characterizing the evolution of the advocate's influence. We also consider costly information acquisition, the use of transfers, and a noisy private signal. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.