Strategic information transmission networks

We study a model of multi-player communication. Privately informed decision makers have different preferences about the actions they take, and communicate to influence each others’ actions in their favor. We prove that the equilibrium capability of any player to send a truthful message to a set of players depends not only on the preference composition of those players, but also on the number of players truthfully communicating with each one of them. We establish that the equilibrium welfare depends not only on the number of truthful messages sent in equilibrium, but also on how evenly truthful messages are distributed across decision makers. © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. JEL classification: D82; D85