OxTalks will soon be transitioning to Oxford Events (full details are available on the Staff Gateway). A two-week publishing freeze is expected in early Hilary to allow all events to be migrated to the new platform. During this period, you will not be able to submit or edit events on OxTalks. The exact freeze dates will be confirmed as soon as possible.
If you have any questions, please contact halo@digital.ox.ac.uk
Economic agents often seek to acquire information before taking an important action, but in many domains, gathering this information requires approval from a regulator. This paper develops a model in which an agent designs an experiment to inform his decision, but can only implement it if a regulator authorizes it ex ante. We characterize the agent’s optimal experiment under this approval constraint and show that, whenever the regulator rejects full revelation, the agent strategically reduces informativeness in the states where their disagreement is strongest. We then extend the model to settings with multiple regulators, comparing sequential and collective approval mechanisms. The analysis yields predictions for how institutional structure shapes access to information, with applications to clinical trials, data privacy, and ethics boards.