Bayesian persuasion with heterogeneous priors

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Alonso, Ricardo; Camara, Odilon
• 署名单位: University of London; London School Economics & Political Science; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of Southern California
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2016.07.006
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 672-706
• 关键词: Persuasion; strategic experimentation; heterogeneous priors

摘要

In a world in which rational individuals may hold different prior beliefs, a sender can influence the behavior of a receiver by controlling the informativeness of an experiment (public signal). We characterize the set of distributions of posterior beliefs that can be induced by an experiment, and provide necessary and sufficient conditions for a sender to benefit from persuasion. We then provide sufficient conditions for the sender to benefit from persuasion for almost every pair of prior beliefs, even when there is no value of persuasion under a common prior. Our main condition is that the receiver's action depends on his beliefs only through his expectation of some random variable. (C) 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.