Dynamic learning and strategic communication

This paper investigates a dynamic model of strategic communication between a principal and an expert with conflicting preferences. In each period, the uninformed principal selects an experiment which privately reveals information about an unknown state to the expert. The expert then sends a cheap talk message to the principal. We show that the principal can elicit perfect information from the expert about the state and achieve the first-best outcome in only two periods if the expert’s preference bias is not too large. If the state space is unbounded, full information revelation is possible for an arbitrarily large bias. Moreover, full revelation of information is feasible in more general frameworks than those considered in the literature, including frameworks which include non-quasiconcave and non-supermodular payoff functions and those with a privately known bias of the expert.