Dottorato di ricerca in Economia, 21 0 ciclo (A. A. 2005/2006- A.A. 2007/2008) Essays on Persuasion Games with Hard Evidence

The thesis consists of three chapters. In the first chapter we study a com-munication game played by three agents with conflicting and state indepen-dent preferences. Each possible outcome of the game uniquely corresponds to a state of the world. The objective is to construct an outcome func-tion (mechanism) that provides the agents with incentives to take actions so that the "true " outcome is implemented. Without any hard evidence in the model communication is worthless. However, if let the agents receive evi-dence to prove the state with infinitesimal probability we are able to induce truthful implementation in every equilibrium. The model resembles a situa-tion of competition among advocates and our main result demonstrates wide possibilities (and economic intuition) for information aggregation within the adversarial procedure. In the second chapter we consider a trial game between a defendant and a judge and focus on the effects of the defendant’s right to remain silent. We provide a rationale for why there is no rule against adverse inference fro