Persuasion with Limited Data: A Case-Based Approach

Shiri Alon, Sarah Auster, Gabi Gayer and Stefania Minardi

No 18428, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: A strategic sender collects data with the goal of persuading a receiver to adopt a new action. The receiver assesses the profitability of adopting the action by following a classical statistics approach: she forms an estimate via the similarity-weighted empirical frequencies of outcomes in past cases, sharing some attributes with the problem at hand. The sender has control over the characteristics of the sampled cases and discloses the outcomes of his study truthfully. We characterize the sender's optimal sampling strategy as the outcome of a greedy algorithm. The sender provides more relevant data–consisting of observations sharing relatively more characteristics with the current problem–when the sampling capacity is low, when a large amount of initial public data is available, and when the estimated benefit of adoption according to this public data is low. Competition between senders curbs incentives for biasing the receiver's estimate and leads to more balanced datasets.

Keywords: Persuasion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D81 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-09
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18428 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Persuasion with Limited Data: A Case-Based Approach (2023)
Working Paper: Persuasion With Limited Data: A Case-Based Approach (2023)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:18428

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP18428

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().