TY - JOUR
T1 - Constructive versus toxic argumentation in debates
AU - Mylovanov, Tymofiy
AU - Zapechelnyuk, Andriy
N1 - Funding Information:
* Mylovanov: University of Pittsburgh, Department of Economics (email: [email protected]); Zapechelnyuk: School of Economics, University of Edinburgh (email: [email protected]). Leeat Yariv was coeditor for this article. The authors are grateful for helpful comments from and inspirational conversations with Alp Atakan, Yuriy Butusov, Selman Erol, David Jaeger, Keiichi Kawai, Stephan Lauermann, Elliot Lipnowski, Marco Mariotti, Ilia Murtazashvili, Peter Norman, Ronny Razin, Larry Samuelson, Daniel Seidmann, Nataliia Shapoval, Joel Sobel, Ina Taneva, Richard van Weelden, Alistair Wilson, the participants of various seminars where this paper has been presented, and anonymous referees. Mylovanov acknowledges the support from the Office of Naval Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) under award number N00014-17-1-2675 and from Kyiv School of Economics. Zapechelnyuk acknowledges the support from the Economic and Social Research Council Grant ES/N01829X/1. Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the supporting organizations. † Go to https://doi.org/10.1257/mic.20220114 to visit the article page for additional materials and author disclosure statement(s) or to comment in the online discussion forum.
Publisher Copyright:
© (2024), (American Economic Association). All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2024/2
Y1 - 2024/2
N2 - Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover's information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes.
AB - Two debaters address an audience by sequentially choosing their information strategies. We compare the setting where the second mover reveals additional information (constructive argumentation) with the setting where the second mover obfuscates the first mover's information (toxic argumentation). We reframe both settings as constrained optimization of the first mover. We show that when the preferences are zero-sum or risk-neutral, constructive debates reveal the state, while toxic debates are completely uninformative. Moreover, constructive debates reveal the state under the assumption on preferences that capture autocratic regimes, whereas toxic debates are completely uninformative under the assumption on preferences that capture democratic regimes.
KW - information design
KW - Bayesian persuasion
KW - information structure
KW - disclosure
KW - obfuscation
KW - garbling
U2 - 10.1257/mic.20220114
DO - 10.1257/mic.20220114
M3 - Article
SN - 1945-7669
VL - 16
SP - 262
EP - 292
JO - American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
JF - American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
IS - 1
ER -