arXiv subjects

Federico Vaccari

Publications and source records attributed to Federico Vaccari.

8 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

A Case for Competition in Information Provision

We study how competition among biased news sources affects information and welfare when sources can misrepresent facts at a cost. Monopolistic and competitive market structures admit many equilibria. We develop a common belief-based selection criterion that applies to both and makes welfare comparisons possible. Under the refined outcomes, adding an oppositely biased source improves the receiver's welfare when that source faces sufficiently high misreporting costs. Competition disciplines the incumbent while introducing a few distortions of its own. Better information need not increase total welfare, and distorted advice from a monopolist can raise total welfare. Competition may improve decision-making without being socially beneficial.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Shadow-score auctions for execution incentives

This paper studies optimal auctions in which the allocation creates a moral hazard problem for a third-party executor. The executor chooses effort before the winner is known. In regular independent-private-values environments, the optimal mechanism is a shadow-score auction. Each bidder's virtual value is adjusted by the shadow value of relaxing the executor's incentive constraint using that bidder's allocation state. Unlike standard scoring auctions, the score is derived from a non-bidder's moral hazard constraint rather than from a preference for quality. Reserve formats miss this ranking channel, as they can adjust whether the object is sold, but cannot favor allocation states that are more useful for motivating execution effort. The paper also studies cases in which this scoring representation breaks down and the optimal mechanism becomes a constrained shadow allocation.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Market tallies: minimal information for efficient trade

This paper studies how much public information is needed to implement efficient trade in dynamic markets with privately informed sellers and buyers. An institution compares a certified statistic of market composition with the statistic implied by agents' reports. Truthful reporting is supported when the statistic changes after every unilateral change in reported type. When all market compositions are possible, the least number of public announcements is {K,L}, where K is the number of seller qualities and L the number of buyer types. The certificate must rely on information outside the reports it checks. The paper also shows that information sufficient to discipline reports need not coordinate buyers across limited capacity. Posted-price implementation may require certified capacities and a clearing rule.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Belief patterns with information processing

This paper presents a model of costly information acquisition where decision-makers can choose whether to elaborate information superficially or precisely. The former action is costless, while the latter entails a processing cost. Within this framework, decision-makers' beliefs may polarize even after they have access to the same evidence. From the perspective of a Bayesian observer who neglects information processing constraints, the decision-makers' optimal behavior and belief updating may appear consistent with biases such as disconfirmation, underreaction to information, and confirmation bias. However, these phenomena emerge naturally within the model and are fully compatible with standard Bayesian inference and rational decision-making when accounting for the costs of information acquisition.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2024

The Unelected Hand? Bureaucratic Influence and Electoral Accountability

What role do non-elected bureaucrats play when elections provide imperfect accountability and create incentives for pandering? We develop a model where politicians and bureaucrats interact to implement policy. Both can either be good, sharing the voters' preferences over policies, or bad, intent on enacting policies that favor special interests. Our analysis identifies the conditions under which good bureaucrats choose to support, oppose, or force pandering. When bureaucrats wield significant influence over policy decisions, good politicians lose their incentives to pander, a shift that ultimately benefits voters. An intermediate level of bureaucratic influence over policymaking can be voter-optimal: large enough to prevent pandering but small enough to avoid granting excessive influence to potentially bad bureaucrats.

econ.GN↗

arXiv2023

Competition in Costly Talk

This paper studies a communication game between an uninformed decision maker and two perfectly informed senders with conflicting interests. Senders can misreport information at a cost that increases with the size of the misrepresentation. The main results show that equilibria where the decision maker obtains the complete-information payoff hinge on beliefs with undesirable properties. The imposition of a minimal and sensible belief structure is sufficient to generate a robust and essentially unique equilibrium with partial information transmission. A complete characterization of this equilibrium unveils the language senders use to communicate.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Efficient Communication in Organizations

This paper studies the organization of communication between biased senders and a receiver. Senders can misreport their private information at a cost. Efficiency is achieved by clearing information asymmetries without incurring costs. Results show that only one communication protocol is efficient, robust to collusion, and free from unnecessary complexities. This protocol has a simple, adversarial, and public structure. It always induces efficient equilibria, for which a closed-form characterization is provided. The findings are relevant for the design of organizations that seek to improve decision-making while limiting wasteful influence activities.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2021

Influential News and Policy-making

It is believed that interventions that change the media's costs of misreporting can increase the information provided by media outlets. This paper analyzes the validity of this claim and the welfare implications of those types of interventions that affect misreporting costs. I study a model of communication between an uninformed voter and a media outlet that knows the quality of two competing candidates. The alternatives available to the voter are endogenously championed by the two candidates. I show that higher costs may lead to more misreporting and persuasion, whereas low costs result in full revelation; interventions that increase misreporting costs never harm the voter, but those that do so slightly may be wasteful of public resources. I conclude that intuitions derived from the interaction between the media and voters, without incorporating the candidates' strategic responses to the media environment, do not capture properly the effects of these types of interventions.

econ.GN↗