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.