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We study the design of informational environments in settings where generating information is costly. We assume that the cost of a signal is proportional to the expected reduction in uncertainty. We show that Kamenica & Gentzkow's (2011) concavification approach to characterizing optimal signals extends to these settings.

The central puzzle of persuasion is why a receiver would listen to a sender who they know is trying to change their beliefs or behavior. This article summarizes five approaches to solving this puzzle: (1) some messages are easier to send for those with favorable information ( costly signaling), (2) the sender and receiver have common interest, (3) the sender messages are verifiable information, (4) the sender cares about their reputation for competence/honesty, and (5) the sender can commit to a messaging strategy (often called 'Bayesian Persuasion'). After reviewing these approaches with common notation, I discuss which provide insight into prominent empirical findings on campaigns, partisan media, and lobbying. While models focusing on commitment have rapidly become prominent (if not dominant) in the recent theoretical literature on persuasion in political science and economics, the insights they provide are primarily technical, and are not particularly well-suited to explaining most of these phenomena.

In many situations, decision makers do not observe all relevant information which undermines their ability to choose the best action or policy. Moreover, it can be difficult or costly to directly acquire the missing information. In such cases, the decision maker may acquire information from privately informed parties with potentially different objectives. The issue is that they may try to influence the outcome in their favor either by withholding or selectively reporting information. For instance, employers rely on information presented by job applicants, financial authorities use firms' reports to evaluate them and elected representatives seek expert advice before selecting policies. In these examples, at least some information is certifiable or verifiable. In other words, the informed party can prove certain statements by presenting hard evidence or the decision maker can verify the accuracy of received claims and documents. Since verification can be costly or time consuming, the decision maker might be able to only partially check the claim. These constraints determine the amount of information that can be verified before the decision is made. The first two chapters focus on models that best describe settings where the decision maker has to evaluate a claim or respond to a request made by an individual or institution. In the third chapter, I consider a slightly different framework where the decision maker seeks advice by consulting informed agents.In the first chapter, I study the basic framework where the informed agent's preferences over the decision maker's actions are independent of the state. In unilateral communication, only the agent sends a message to the decision maker. In bilateral communication, both exchange messages sequentially. I study and compare these two types of mechanisms under the constraint that the agent can present the same amount of certifiable information in both cases. In the canonical bilateral communication mechanism, after receiving a claim from the agent, the decision maker asks him to certify a certain event and bases her decision on his ability to do so. The main result of this chapter essentially states that if information certification is limited and the limitation prevents the decision maker from achieving her first-best in unilateral communication then she strictly benefits from bilateral communication.In the second chapter, which results from a joint work with Frédéric Koessler (CNRS, Paris School of Economics), we study implementation in the presence of ambiguity aversion. We show that if an allocation rule can be implemented with unlimited information certification, then it can also be implemented with limited information certification if the designer can use ambiguous communication mechanisms, and if agents are averse to ambiguity in the sense of maxmin expected utility. The reverse implication is true if there is a single agent and a worst outcome.In the third chapter, I study a setting with two types of informed agents. One type prefers higher actions while the other prefers lower actions. The decision maker ignores the informed agent's preferences. In this case, it might not be sufficient to consult one agent. I study sequential consultation of more than one informed agent and examine its impact on information revelation. It is shown that in equilibrium the decision maker may consult more than one agent and that she continues to seek advice as long as her uncertainty is high enough. Learning on the equilibrium path happens through both revelation and withholding of information. It is possible for agents of the minority - in terms of preferences - to influence the decision maker by withholding information so that she chooses their favorite outcome when she should not. Moreover, sequential consultation can be used as a threat to extract more precise information while consulting only one agent. ; Dans de nombreuses situations, les décideurs sont amenés à choisir une action ou une politique sans être parfaitement informés. De plus, il est parfois difficile ou coûteux d'acquérir directement les informations manquantes. Dans ce cas, ils peuvent solliciter l'aide des institutions ou individus informés. Ces derniers peuvent essayer d'influencer la décision en leur faveur en cachant ou en ne présentant qu'une partie de l'information. Par exemple, les employeurs s'appuient sur l'information présentée par les demandeurs d'emploi, les autorités financières utilisent les rapports des entreprises pour les évaluer et les élus consultent les experts avant de proposer une loi. Dans ces exemples, au moins certaines informations sont certifiables ou vérifiables. En d'autres termes, la partie informée peut prouver certaines déclarations en présentant des preuves ou le décideur peut vérifier l'exactitude de ces déclarations. Puisque la vérification peut être coûteuse ou prenante, le décideur ne peut souvent vérifier qu'une partie de l'information reçue. Ces contraintes déterminent la quantité d'information qui peut être vérifiée avant la prise de décision. Les deux premiers chapitres portent sur des modèles adaptés aux situations où le décideur doit évaluer une déclaration ou répondre à une demande faite par une personne ou une institution. Dans le troisième chapitre, je considère un cadre légèrement différent où le décideur consulte des agents informés avant de choisir une action.Dans le premier chapitre, j'étudie un modèle où les préférences de l'agent informé sont indépendantes de l'état. En communication unilatérale, seul l'agent envoie un message au décideur. En communication bilatérale, les deux échangent des messages. Je compare ces deux mécanismes en supposant que la même quantité de preuves peut être présentée dans les deux cas. Dans le mécanisme canonique de communication bilatérale, après avoir reçu une déclaration de la part de l'agent, le décideur lui demande de présenter une preuve en particulier. La décision dépend seulement de sa capacité à présenter la preuve demandée. Le résultat principal de ce chapitre stipule que la communication bilatérale améliore le résultat si la certification de l'information est limitée de manière à empêcher le décideur d'atteindre son optimum en communication unilatérale.Le deuxième chapitre, qui résulte d'un travail joint avec Frédéric Koessler (CNRS, École d'Économie de Paris), étudie l'implémentation en présence d'agents averses à l'ambiguïté. Nous montrons que si une règle d'allocation peut être implémentée avec une certification illimitée, elle peut également être implémentée avec une certification limitée d'information si le décideur peut utiliser des mécanismes de communication ambigus et si les agents sont averses à l'ambiguïté au sens du maxmin. L'implication inverse est vraie s'il ya un seul agent et une action de punition.Dans le troisième chapitre, j'étudie un modèle avec deux types d'agents informés. Un type veut maximiser l'action du décideur tandis que l'autre veut la minimiser. Dans ce cas, il peut y avoir besoin de consulter plus d'un agent. J'étudie la consultation séquentielle et j'examine son impact sur la révélation d'information. À l'équilibre, le décideur continue de consulter des agents informés tant que son incertitude est suffisamment élevée. Les agents minoritaires - en termes de préférences - peuvent influencer le décideur en cachant l'information lorsqu'elle est défavorable car il anticipe, à juste titre, que la majorité est davantage susceptible de le faire. En outre, la menace de consultation séquentielle peut être utilisée afin d'extraire des informations plus précises tout en consultant un seul agent.

An informer sequentially collects and disseminates information through costly research to persuade an evaluator to approve an activity. Payoffs and control rights are split between informer and evaluator depending on the organizational rules governing the approval process. The welfare benchmark corresponds to Wald's classic solution for a statistician with payoff equal to the sum of informer and evaluator. Organizations with different commitment power of informer and evaluator are compared from a positive and normative perspective. Granting authority to the informer is socially optimal when information acquisition is sufficiently costly. The analysis is applied to the regulatory process for drug approval. (JEL D82, D83, I18, L51, L65, O31)

Political scientists have been using individuals' self-reported efforts to try to influence the votes of others as one indicator of political activism for more than a half-century. However, in spite of this widespread use, very little is known about the motivations of interpersonal persuasion. This dissertation examines why some people try to influence the votes of others during the course of their everyday political conversations, while others are content to discuss politics without trying to persuade. Although attempts to persuade are often treated as a form of campaign participation with a goal of influencing the outcome of the election, I find that the motivations for persuasion are more internal and interpersonal than are the motivations for other forms of campaign involvement. I argue that interpersonal persuasion should be treated as a form of discursive participation, with consequences for our understanding of public opinion and deliberation.I use three large-scale survey datasets to examine interpersonal persuasion as a distinct form of political participation: the 2012 American National Election Studies (Ch. 3), the Youth-Parent Political Socialization Panel (Ch. 4), and the 2008 National Annenberg Election Studies Phone Survey (Ch. 5). Each dataset has distinct advantages in design and content that allow for examination of particular features of the motivations of persuasion. Using a variety of statistical methods and data sources, the overall argument is that attempts at persuasion have relatively little to do with campaigns and elections, and much more to do with individual orientations towards politics and social norms about political discussion. In particular, I find that organizational membership and campaign mobilization efforts do not provide the driving force for attempts to persuade that characterize other forms of political activity. Additionally, persuasive behavior does not ebb and flow in expected ways relative to the campaign cycle or the competitiveness of races. Rather, internal (but not external) efficacy, political capital (e.g., political interest, attention to political news), and exposure to disagreement and attempts to persuade by other social contacts are highly predictive of persuasive behavior. Persuasive behavior also declines over the life cycle, unlike many other forms of participation, and it is not a stepping stone to other more costly or time-intensive forms of participation. Therefore, persuasive behavior is equally or better understood within a framework of discursive participation, where it is a mechanism for people to develop their political identities, form political opinions, and process political events within the context of their social networks.