Essays in economic theory

• Department of Economics

Thesis Defence: “Essays in economic theory” by Matteo Escudé.

The first two chapters of this thesis study issues related to the production and transmission of information. In both chapters, a decision maker must make choices under uncertainty while another agent has the ability to produce and transmit information relevant to those decisions. There is a conflict of interest between the two, which may lead the latter to acquire and transmit information strategically.

The first chapter studies the extent to which the incentives to acquire and transmit information are influenced by its verifiability. I provide conditions under which the information provider benefits from having access to more verifiable information. In the second chapter (joint with Ludvig Sinander) we restrict the information provider to produce evidence gradually and study how her information provision depends on this constraint. In the third and final chapter (joint with Ludvig Sinander) we characterise strict strategy-proofness in a canonical one-dimensional mechanism design setting with private values.