Title: Information Disclosure under Opaque Objectives

Speaker: Liu Jinliang, Assistant Researcher of the School of Economics, Shandong University; graduated from Texas A&M University, USA with a doctoral degree in economics in 2024. His research fields are behavioral and experimental economics, information economics, and mechanism design.

Abstract: In information disclosure games, the receiver does not know the sender's verifiable information. In this paper, the receiver may also be uncertain about the sender's objective. We investigate how the sender leverages the options to hide or reveal her verifiable information and how the receiver responds when the sender's objective is or is not common knowledge. Our model derives multiple equilibria. To examine the equilibrium selection, we conduct between-subjects laboratory experiments where the sender's objective is known to the receiver in transparent treatments, but unknown to the receiver in opaque treatments. When the sender's objective is opaque to the receiver, the selected equilibrium is the one where the receiver behaves as if he merely bases his decision on his prior of the sender's verifiable information when the sender reveals no information. However, the behavioral differences between transparent and opaque treatments are minimal due to non-unraveling equilibrium behavior under transparent treatments.

Date & time: 10 April 2025, 12:15 - 13:15

Venue: B322, Zhixin Building, Central Campus, Shandong University