Keeping the Listener Engaged: a Dynamic Model of Bayesian Persuasion

Speaker:  Konrad MIERENDORFF

Professor at the University College London (UCL)

ZOOM videoconference 

Abstract :

We consider a dynamic model of Bayesian persuasion. Over time, a sender performs a series of experiments to persuade a receiver to take a desired action. Due to constraints on the information flow, the sender must take real time to persuade, and the receiver may stop listening and take a final action at any time. In addition, persuasion is costly for both players. To incentivize the receiver to listen, the sender must leave rents that compensate his listening costs, but neither player can commit to her/his future actions. Persuasion may totally collapse in Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE) of this game. However, for persuasion costs sufficiently small, a version of a folk theorem holds: outcomes that approximate Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011)'s sender-optimal persuasion as well as full revelation (which is most preferred by the receiver) and everything in between are obtained in MPE, as the cost vanishes.