Silence speaks volumes: dynamic cheap talk over a static issue

I extend the canonical cheap talk model to a continuous-time setting in which a biased sender privately observes the state and strategically chooses when to communicate, while a receiver decides when to stop waiting and act. Waiting is costly because both players discount future payoffs. In equilibrium, information is gradually revealed through strategic silence: the sender’s silence at certain times signals valuable information, allowing the receiver to update her beliefs continuously. This generates an unraveling process in which increasingly high types are revealed over time under positive bias, and increasingly low types are revealed under negative bias. Learning remains incomplete, however, because waiting costs eventually induce the receiver to stop and make an educated guess. I derive conditions for the existence of this dynamic revelation equilibrium and show that strategic timing can enhance information transmission and receiver welfare relative to static cheap talk. I also show that multiple senders with opposing biases accelerate learning and increase the extent of revelation.