Going Public: Communication in Collective Decisions
Zhicheng Du, Yingkai Li, Boli Xu
TLDR
Public communication dominates private messaging in collective decisions with conflicting agent interests.
Key contributions
- Models principal-agent project approval with unknown state and communication.
- Shows public messaging weakly dominates private messaging outcomes.
- Characterizes optimal tests under both communication regimes.
- Public messaging strictly better when two agents conflict as principal's allies.
Why it matters
This paper clarifies when public communication improves collective decision-making. It reveals that public messaging always matches or outperforms private messaging, especially with conflicting agent interests, guiding better communication design.
Original Abstract
A principal and $n\ge 2$ agents can launch a project if the principal proposes it and at least $k$ agents accept. Their individual payoffs from the project depend on an ex ante unknown state. The principal can conduct a test to learn about the state and then communicate her findings to the agents via cheap talk. This paper focuses on comparing two communication regimes: public and private messaging. We show that public messaging is weakly dominant: any outcome implementable under private messaging can also be implemented under public messaging. Moreover, in a canonical environment with linear payoffs, we characterize the principal's optimal test in each regime and show that public messaging can be strictly dominant if and only if there exist two agents who are the principal's conflicting allies.
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