OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
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Abstract
I examine a setting, where an information sender conducts research into a payoff-relevant state variable, and releases information to agents, who consider joining a coalition. The agents’ actions can cause harm by contributing to a public bad. The sender, who has commitment power, by designing an information mechanism (a set of signals and a probability distribution over them), maximises his payoff, which depends on the action taken by the agents, and the state variable. I derive the optimal information mechanism from the general set of public information mechanisms, in coalition formation games. I show that the coalition size, as a function of beliefs of agents, is an endogenous variable, induced by the information sender. I also apply the results to International Environmental Agreements (IEAs), where a central authority, as an information sender, attempts to reduce the global level of greenhouse gases(GHG) by communication of information on social cost of GHG.
