Cover up experiment data
To study the incentives for evidence disclosure and information acquisition in this setting, I combine two features of investigations. The first one is that, as in ? and ?, the effectiveness of the investigation depends both on the extent of information revelation by the politician being scrutinized, and on the investment into information acquisition by the investigators (Congress or the media in this case). The second feature is the one discussed above: before the investigation reaches a conclusion about the specific action being scrutinized, information about the agent’s overall competence can be revealed. Thus, the success of the outcome of the investigation is a function both of evidence released by the the politician and (costly) information acquired by the investigative body; but the more rigorous the investigation and abundant the evidence, the greater the chance that in the process something about the type of the incumbent will be revealed (independently of the outcome of the investigation).