Working Papers

1. Targeted Advertising in Elections Maria Titova Abstract Paper Slides

   Does targeted advertising improve the odds of winning elections? I compare private and public communication with verifiable information in a one-dimensional spatial model of voting. I find that electoral outcomes are different in a special class of elections, winning which requires convincing voters with diametrically opposing preferences. That is, when targeted advertising is effective, it swings elections. To win, the politician tells different voters different lies of omission. Targeted advertising is bad for democracy because it elects politicians who are guaranteed to lose when voters possess the same (complete or incomplete) information. Publicizing all the ads transmitted during electoral campaigns is the most effective policy tool against it.

   
   

1. Persuasion with Verifiable Information Maria Titova R&R at Journal of Economic Theory Abstract Paper Slides

   This paper studies a game in which an informed sender with state-independent preferences uses verifiable messages to convince a receiver to take an action out of a finite set. I find that every equilibrium is deterministic and is characterized by a partition of the state space into sets on which the receiver takes a particular action. My first result is that a partition of the state space is an equilibrium outcome if and only if each action set satisfies the sender’s incentive-compatibility and the receiver’s obedience constraints. My second result states that an ex-ante optimal commitment outcome is an equilibrium outcome of the game with verifiable information if and only if the sender receives at least his complete information payoff in every state, as long as the state space or the message space is sufficiently rich.

   
   

1. Collaborative Search for a Public Good Maria Titova Abstract Paper Slides

   This paper studies a model of costly sequential search among risky alternatives performed by a group of agents. The learning process stops, and the best uncovered option is implemented when the agents unanimously agree to stop or when all the projects have been researched. Both the implemented project and all the information gathered during the search process are public goods. I show that the equilibrium path implements the same project based on the same information gathered in the same order as the social planner. At the same time, due to free riding, search in teams leads to a delay at each stage of the learning process, which grows with search costs. Consequently, the team manager prefers to delegate the search to an individual agent. In contrast, every agent prefers searching with a partner, since she collects the same reward but only pays the search cost half the time.

   
   

Work in Progress

1. Verifiable Disclosure Germán Gieczewski and Maria Titova Abstract

   We propose a solution concept for games of verifiable disclosure which relies on a notion of interim sender optimality. We show under what conditions this solution concept coincides with receiver-optimal equilibria, as well as with other selection devices in the literature such as truth-leaning equilibria. Our solution concept is general enough that it is applicable to a game of verifiable disclosure with general state-independent sender preferences that satisfies mild restrictions on the message space.

   
   
2. Learning and Competition in Electoral Campaigns Peter Bils and Maria Titova Slides
   
3. Political Messaging and Trade Policy Renee Bowen, J. Lawrence Broz, and Maria Titova
   

Publications

1. Shopping Malls, Platforms and Consumer Search Alexei Parakhonyak and Maria Titova International Journal of Industrial Organization Abstract Paper Slides

   We consider a model of a market for differentiated goods in which firms are located in marketplaces e.g., shopping malls or platforms. There are search frictions between marketplaces, but not within. Marketplaces differ in size. We show that an equilibrium in which consumers start their search at the largest marketplace and continue in the descending order of size, always exists. Despite charging lower prices, firms in larger marketplaces earn higher profits. Under free entry, all firms cluster in one marketplace provided that search frictions are large enough. If a marketplace determines the price of entry, then the equilibrium marketplace size is a single-peaked function of search costs and is decreasing for most of the search cost range.