THE FACE VALUE OF ARGUMENTS WITH AND WITHOUT MANIPULATION

Mike Felgenhauer and Fangya Xu

International Economic Review, 2021, vol. 62, issue 1, 277-293

Abstract: A sender wishes to persuade a receiver with a (surprising) result that challenges the prior belief. The result stems either from sequential private experimentation or manipulation. The incentive to experiment and to manipulate depends on the quality threshold for persuasion. Higher thresholds make it harder to find a surprising outcome via experimentation and may encourage manipulation. Suppose there are observable nonmanipulable and manipulable research methods. For the decision quality, the quality threshold for persuasion for nonmanipulable methods should be higher than for manipulable methods. We discuss philosophy of science implications, such as field contingent quality standards and P‐value adjustments.

Date: 2021
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