arXiv subjects

Raphael Boleslavsky

Publications and source records attributed to Raphael Boleslavsky.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Designing Signals for Deterrence

States and alliances spend enormous resources signaling resolve to deter adversaries. Two canonical strategies are burning money (sunk costs) and burning bridges (audience costs). Large audience costs can deter effectively, but they may be infeasible and, even when feasible, can increase the likelihood of war relative to burning money. We propose a signaling design in which the defender retains the flexibility to fight or back down but commits ex ante, before learning its resolve, to a rule mapping realized resolve into costly actions. When audience costs are limited, this design raises defender payoffs while reducing the likelihood of war. We discuss implementation through laws and automated algorithms. We also characterize defender payoffs when audience costs are chosen endogenously from a feasible set, showing that lowering the maximum feasible audience cost can raise defender payoffs, and we compare these payoffs with those under the standard burning-money setting without commitment.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2026

Algorithm Transparency and Search Manipulation: Steering vs. Persuasion

We study a platform that prefers to sell the more profitable of two products. It designs an algorithm that determines the product the consumer encounters first, conditional on her best match. The algorithm simultaneously manipulates consumer attention (steers) and communicates information about match quality (informs). When the algorithm is opaque, it is difficult for a consumer to understand how product order is generated and what it reveals. In the platform's preferred equilibrium, it places the profitable product first. When the algorithm is transparent, the consumer understands the algorithm and what it conveys. Thus, the algorithm can persuade as well as steer. In some cases, the equilibrium algorithm deters search, in others, encourages it. In the former case, transparency helps consumers; in the latter, it harms some or all of them. Extending or shifting transparency requirements uncouples steering from information provision, reverting the consumer's welfare to opacity.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2025

Limits of Disclosure in Search Markets

This paper examines competitive information disclosure in search markets with a mix of savvy consumers, who search costlessly, and inexperienced consumers, who face positive search costs. Savvy consumers incentivize truthful disclosure; inexperienced consumers, concealment. With both types, equilibrium features partial disclosure, which persists despite intense competition: in large markets, firms always conceal low valuations. Inexperienced consumers may search actively, but only in small markets. While savvy consumers benefit from increased competition, inexperienced consumers may be harmed. Changes in search costs have non-monotone effects: when costs are low, sufficient reductions increase informativeness and welfare; when costs are high, the opposite.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2025

The Design and Price of Influence

A sender with private preferences would like to influence a receiver's action by providing information through a statistical test. The technology for information production is controlled by a monopolist intermediary, who offers a menu of tests and prices to screen the sender's type. We characterize the intermediary's optimal screening menu and the associated distortions, which may benefit the receiver by increasing test informativeness. Because of these distortions, seemingly unfavorable changes in the prior belief may actually benefit the sender. In extensions, we study (i) a stronger intermediary who can commit to a ``coercive'' test to punish non-participation and (ii) a weaker intermediary who cannot control test design but can charge for access.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2025

Signaling With Commitment

We study the canonical signaling game, endowing the sender with commitment power: before learning the state, sender designs a strategy, which maps the state into a probability distribution over actions. We provide a geometric characterization of the sender's attainable payoffs, described by the topological join of the graphs of the interim payoff functions associated with different sender actions. We then incorporate payoff irrelevant messages into the game, characterizing the attainable payoffs when sender commits to (i) both messages and actions, and (ii) only messages. By studying the tradeoffs between these model variations, we highlight the power of commitment to actions. We apply our results to the design of adjudication procedures and rating systems.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Waiting for Fake News

This paper studies a dynamic model of information acquisition, in which information might be secretly manipulated. A principal must choose between a safe action with known payoff and a risky action with uncertain payoff, favoring the safe action under the prior belief. She may delay her decision to acquire additional news that reveals the risky action's payoff, without knowing exactly when such news will arrive. An uninformed agent with a misaligned preference may have the capability to generate a false arrival of news, which is indistinguishable from a real one, distorting the information content of news and the principal's search. The analysis characterizes the positive and normative distortions in the search for news arising from such manipulation, and it considers three remedies that increase the principal's payoff: a commitment to naive search, transfer of authority to the agent, and delegation to an intermediary who is biased in the agent's favor.

econ.TH↗