An example of conflicts of interest as pandering disincentives

- An agent communicates the state of the world via cheap talk to a listener.
- Listener chooses a project-state dependent-or outside option-state independent.
- Conflicts of interest over projects and outside option countervail each other.
- An increase in conflicts of interest in one dimension improves communication.

Consider an uninformed decision maker (DM) who communicates with a partially informed agent through cheap talk. DM can choose a project to implement or the outside option of no project. Unlike the current literature, we show that if there exists multiple dimensions of conflicts of interests between a single agent and a single receiver (DM), an increase in the conflict of interest in one dimension may actually improve cheap talk communication given that it acts as a countervailing force to conflicts of interest in other dimensions.