Good Cop, Bad Cop: Delegating Interrogations

Alessandro Ispano and Péter Vida
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Alessandro Ispano: LEDa - Laboratoire d'Economie de Dauphine - IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le Développement - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Péter Vida: Corvinus University of Budapest

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Abstract: A decision-maker who aims to find the truth from a suspect delegates to an interrogator with possibly misaligned preferences. The ideal interrogator is always misaligned: sometimes nicer, sometimes tougher. The decision-maker can further improve by conditioning the delegation on the evidence, which is her private information, appointing a nice interrogator when the evidence is weak and a tougher interrogator when the evidence is strong. Dynamic, endogenous, conditional delegation can credibly convey information about the strength of the evidence and implement the overall optimum with full commitment. Moreover, the decision-maker can then retain authority over decisions by relying on the interrogator's recommendations.

Keywords: Interrogation strategies; Information asymmetry; Delegation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02-01
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Published in Journal of Law and Economics, 2026, 69 (1), pp.151-173. ⟨10.1086/736800⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05566465

DOI: 10.1086/736800

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