Fake Persuasion

Helios Herrera, Jacob Glazer and Motty Perry

No 13244, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: We propose a model of product reviews with honest and fake reviews to study the value of information provided on platforms like TripAdvisor, Yelp, etc. In every period, a review is posted which is either honest, namely reveals the reviewer's true experience with the product/service, or fake, namely entirely fabricated in order to manipulate the public's beliefs. We establish that the equilibrium is unique and derive robust and interesting results about these markets. While fake agents are able to affect the public's beliefs in their preferred direction, aggregation of information takes place as long as some of the reviews are honest.

Keywords: Sender-receiver; games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-mic
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