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Attention costs can cause some information to be ignored and decisions to be imperfect. Can we improve the material welfare of a rationally inattentive agent by restricting his information in the first place? In our model, a well-intentioned principal provides information to an agent for whom information is costly to process, but the principal does not internalize this cost. We show that full information is universally optimal if and only if the environment comprises one issue. With multiple issues, attention management becomes optimal: the principal restricts some information to induce the agent to pay attention to other aspects. (JEL D82, D83, D91)

Information provision in games influences behavior by affecting agents’ beliefs about the state as well as their higher-order beliefs. We first characterize the extent to which a designer can manipulate agents’ beliefs by disclosing information. We then describe the structure of optimal belief distributions, including a concave-envelope representation that subsumes the single-agent result of Kamenica and Gentzkow. This result holds under various solution concepts and outcome selection rules. Finally, we use our approach to compute an optimal information structure in an investment game under adversarial equilibrium selection.

A well-intentioned principal provides information to a rationally inattentive agent without internalizing the agent's cost of processing information. Whatever information the principal makes available, the agent may choose to ignore some. We study optimal information provision in a tractable model with quadratic payoffs where full disclosure is not optimal. We characterize incentive-compatible information policies, that is, those to which the agent willingly pays full attention. In a leading example with three states, optimal disclosure involves information distortion at intermediate costs of attention. As the cost increases, optimal information abruptly changes from downplaying the state to exaggerating the state.

In reality, the organizational structure of information — describing how information is transmitted to its recipients — is as important as its content. In this paper, we introduce families of (indirect) information structures, namely meeting schemes and delegated hierarchies, that capture the horizontal and vertical dimensions of real-world transmission. We characterize the outcomes that they implement in general (finite) games and show that they are optimal in binary-action environments with strategic complementarities. Our application to classical regime-change games illustrates the variety of optimal meeting schemes and delegated hierarchies as a function of the objective

Should a well-intentioned advisor always tell the whole truth? In standard economics, the answer is yes (Blackwell (1953)), but in the world of psychological preferences (Geanakoplos, Pearce, and Stacchetti (1989))—where a listener’s state of mind has a direct impact on his well-being—things are not so simple. In this paper, we study how a benevolent principal should disclose information to a psychological agent. After characterizing attitudes toward information, we study optimal information disclosure. Psychological aversion to information is of particular interest. We show that, for information-averse agents, the principal may simply provide information in the form of a recommended action. Next, we study how the optimal policy changes with informationaversion. We also o er general tools of optimal disclosure. We apply our results to choices under prior-bias and cognitive dissonance; consumption-saving decisions with temptation and self-control problems (Gul and Pesendorfer (2001)); and doctor-patient relationships.

Empirical models of strategic games are central to much analysis in marketing and economics. However, two challenges in applying these models to real-world data are that such models often admit multiple equilibria and that they require strong informational assumptions. The first implies that the model does not make unique predictions about the data, and the second implies that results may be driven by strong a priori assumptions about the informational setup. This article summarizes recent work that seeks to address both issues and suggests some avenues for future research.

We study the design of mechanisms that implement Lindahl or Walrasian allocations and whose Nash equilibria are dynamically stable for a wide class of adaptive dynamics. We argue that supermodularity is not a desirable stability criterion in this mechanism design context, focusing instead on contractive mechanisms. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a mechanism to Nash-implement Lindahl or Walrasian allocations, show that these conditions are inconsistent with the contraction property when message spaces are one-dimensional, and then show how to use additional dimensions to achieve dynamic stability while gaining budget balance out of equilibrium.

This paper introduces a mechanism design approach that allows dealing with the multiple equilibrium problem, using mechanisms that are robust to bounded rationality. This approach is a tool for constructing supermodular mechanisms, i.e. mechanisms that induce games with strategic complementarities. In quasilinear environments, I prove that if a social choice function can be implemented by a mechanism that generates bounded strategic substitutes - as opposed to strategic complementarities - then this mechanism can be converted into a supermodular mechanism that implements the social choice function. If the social choice function also satisfies some efficiency criterion, then it admits a supermodular mechanism that balances the budget. Building on these results, I address the multiple equilibrium problem. I provide sufficient conditions for a social choice function to be implementable with a supermodular mechanism whose equilibria are contained in the smallest interval among all supermodular mechanisms. This is followed by conditions for supermodular implementability in unique equilibrium. Finally, I provide a revelation principle for supermodular implementation in environments with general preferences.

I provide a new proof of uniqueness of equilibrium in a wide class of global games. I show that the joint best-response in these games is a contraction. The uniqueness result then follows as a corollary of the contraction principle. Furthermore, the contraction-mapping approach provides an intuition for why uniqueness arises: complementarities in games generate multiplicity of equilibria, but the global-games structure dampens complementarities so that only one equilibrium exists.

We model and compare three different processes by which political parties nominate candidates for a general election: nominations by party leaders, nominations by a vote of party members, and nominations by a spending competition among potential candidates. We show that in equilibrium, non-median outcomes can result when two parties compete using nominations via any of these processes. We also show that more extreme outcomes can emerge from spending competition than from nominations by votes or by party leaders. When voters (and potential nominees) are free to switch political parties, then median outcomes ensue when nominations are decided by a vote but not when nominations are decided by spending competition.

This paper studies supermodular mechanism design in environments with arbitrary (finite) type spaces and interdependent valuations. In these environments, the designer may have to use Bayesian equilibrium as a solution concept, because ex-post implementation may not be possible. We propose direct (Bayesian) mechanisms that are robust to certain forms of bounded rationality while controlling for equilibrium multiplicity. In quasi-linear environments with informational and allocative externalities, we show that any Bayesian mechanism that implements a social choice function can be converted into a supermodular mechanism that also implements the original decision rule. The proposed supermodular mechanism can be chosen in a way that minimizes the size of the equilibrium set, and we provide two sets of sufficient conditions to this effect. This is followed by conditions for supermodular implementation in unique equilibrium.

We study the impact of frictions on the prevalence of systemic crises. Agents privately learn about a fixed payoff parameter, and repeatedly adjust their investments while facing transaction costs in a dynamic global game. The model has a rich structure of externalities: payoffs may depend on the volume of aggregate investment, on the concentration of investment, or on its volatility. We examine how small frictions, including those similar to the Tobin tax, affect the equilibrium. We identify conditions under which frictions discourage harmful behavior without compromising investment volume. The analysis is driven by a robust invariance result: the volume of aggregate investment (measured in a pivotal contingency) is invariant to a large family of frictions.