Truth and Deception

Jeremy Bertomeu and Edwige Cheynel

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Organizations rely on languages that imperfectly represent underlying states. We study the interaction of a lying cost, increasing in the distance from the message prescribed by the language, and a deception cost, increasing in the distortion induced in beliefs. Higher lying costs reduce bias and informativeness; higher deception costs do the opposite. Full revelation is sustained as lying costs become small, but with unbounded bias and communication costs. The most efficient policies sustaining nearly full revelation feature high deception costs with some tolerance for lying. With complementarities, targeting messages both untruthful and deceptive sustains full revelation without communication costs.

Date: 2026-10
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2610.28783 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2610.28783

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().