We provide necessary and su¢ cient conditions on both players' preferences and information that can be certi…ed for a Sender-Receiver game to possess a separating equilibrium, as well as su¢ cient conditions for every equilibrium of such a game to be separating. Accordingly, we generalize Seidmann and Winter's [D.J. Seidmann, E. Winter, Strategic information transmission with veri…able messages, Econometrica 65 (1997) 163-170] results to games with partial provability.
I n committee deliberation, requiring a unanimous vote intuitively provides the strongest incentives for actors to share fully their opinions and private information. It is also believed that full revelation of (decision-relevant) information occurs when personal biases are made clear before deliberation. However, recent literature suggests that both intuitions are flawed. Austen-Smith and Feddersen propose a model in which the unanimity rule performs worse than other rules in promoting fully revealing deliberation, and uncertainty about individuals' preferences promotes full sharing of information. We extend this work by incorporating the possibility that individuals may provide verifiable evidence for their private information. Under this circumstance, we demonstrate that Austen-Smith and Feddersen's results are reversed. First, a unanimous voting rule performs better than any other, as unanimity is the only rule that always promotes fully revealing deliberation. Second, under fairly general conditions, uncertainty about individuals' preferences prevents full sharing of information.M any important political, legal, and economic decisions are made by committees. 1 Usually, committees are composed of experts with asymmetric information. The voting rule used for decision-making may vary across committees, and even within a committee it may vary across issue areas. 2 Deliberative committees typically talk and share information before reaching decisions by voting. Does the voting rule impact the amount of information that members' transmit before voting? Does uncertainty about individuals' private preferences contribute to a decline in information transmission? For committee members, how does the possibility of providing evidence supporting private information affect the decision making? Requiring a unanimous vote is widely believed to provide "some insurance that the opinions of each of the debaters will be heard and discussed" (Walker and Lane 1994, 2). 3 It is also believed that full revelation of (decisionrelevant) information occurs when personal biases are made clear before deliberation. However, recent literature suggests that both intuitions are flawed and thus calls into question the supposed benefits of a unanimous vote and preference certainty. In this article, we show that both intuitions are restored if indiJérôme Mathis is Assistant Professor,
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