Bayesian persuasion with heterogeneous priors

Ricardo Alonso and Odilon Câmara

Journal of Economic Theory, 2016, vol. 165, issue C, 672-706

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: Persuasion; Strategic experimentation; Heterogeneous priors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D72 D83 M31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (60)

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Working Paper: Bayesian persuasion with heterogeneous priors (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jetheo:v:165:y:2016:i:c:p:672-706

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2016.07.006

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