Persuasion for the Long Run
Abstract:
We examine a persuasion game where concerns about future credibility are the sole source of current credibility. A long-run sender plays a cheap talk game with a sequence of short-run receivers. Even with perfect monitoring, long-run incentives do not perfectly substitute for ex-ante commitment to reporting strategies at the stage game. We then show that different methods of augmenting or garbling history can better harness long-run incentives and expand the Pareto frontier. In particular, a `review aggregator’ can implement average payoffs and information structures arbitrarily close to those available under ex-ante commitment. Finally, we examine applications to e-commerce and finance.
Date: 15 November 2017, 17:00 (Wednesday, 6th week, Michaelmas 2017)
Venue: Nuffield College, New Road OX1 1NF
Venue Details: Brock Room
Speaker: James Best (University of Oxford)
Organising department: Department of Economics
Part of: Postdoctoral Fellows Seminar
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Erin Saunders, Anne Pouliquen