A population's feasible posterior beliefs

Itai Arieli and Yakov Babichenko

Journal of Economic Theory, 2024, vol. 215, issue C

Abstract: We consider a population of Bayesian agents who share a common prior over some finite state space and each agent is exposed to some information about the state. We characterize which distributions over the empirical distribution of posterior beliefs in the population are feasible. We apply this result in several domains. First, we study the problem of maximizing the polarization of beliefs in a population. Second, we provide a characterization of the feasible agent-symmetric product distributions of posteriors. Finally, we study an instance of a private Bayesian persuasion problem and provide a clean formula for the sender's optimal value.

Keywords: Feasible posterior distribution; Empirical distributions of posteriors; Polarization; Bayesian persuasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:215:y:2024:i:c:s0022053123001606

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2023.105764

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