Persuasion of a privately informed receiver

Abstract: We study persuasion mechanisms in linear environments. A privately informed receiver chooses between two actions. A sender designs a persuasion mechanism that can condition the information disclosed to the receiver on the receiver’s report about his type. We establish the equivalence of implementation by persuasion mechanisms and by experiments. We characterize optimal persuasion mechanisms. In particular, if the density of the receiver’s type is log-concave, then the optimal persuasion mechanism reveals the state if and only if it is below a threshold. We apply our results to the design of media censorship policies.

The research was published in the scientific journal Econometrics in 2017. To find the article, please follow the link.