IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17436.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Competition in Persuasion

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Gentzkow
  • Emir Kamenica

Abstract

We study symmetric information games where a number of senders choose what information to communicate. We show that the impact of competition on information revelation is ambiguous in general. We identify a condition on the information environment (i.e., the set of signals available to each sender) that is necessary and sufficient for equilibrium outcomes to be no less informative than the collusive outcome, regardless of preferences. The same condition also provides an easy way to characterize the equilibrium set and governs whether introducing additional senders or decreasing the alignment of senders’ preferences necessarily increases the amount of information revealed.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Gentzkow & Emir Kamenica, 2011. "Competition in Persuasion," NBER Working Papers 17436, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17436
    Note: IO LE POL
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17436.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Grossman, Sanford J, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 461-483, December.
    2. Martimort, David & Stole, Lars, 2011. "Aggregate Representations of Aggregate Games," MPRA Paper 32871, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    3. Sourav Bhattacharya & Arijit Mukherjee, 2013. "Strategic information revelation when experts compete to influence," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(3), pages 522-544, September.
    4. Leland, Hayne E, 1981. "The Informational Role of Warranties and Private Disclosure about Product Quality: Comment," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 24(3), pages 485-489, December.
    5. Milgrom, Paul & Shannon, Chris, 1994. "Monotone Comparative Statics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(1), pages 157-180, January.
    6. Paul R. Milgrom, 1981. "Good News and Bad News: Representation Theorems and Applications," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 12(2), pages 380-391, Autumn.
    7. Marco Battaglini, 2002. "Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1379-1401, July.
    8. Isabelle Brocas & Juan Carrillo & Thomas Palfrey, 2012. "Information gatekeepers: theory and experimental evidence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(3), pages 649-676, November.
    9. Paul Milgrom & John Roberts, 1986. "Relying on the Information of Interested Parties," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 17(1), pages 18-32, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. “Competition in Persuasion,” M. Gentzkow & E. Kamenica (2012)
      by afinetheorem in A Fine Theorem on 2014-04-18 00:34:59

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    2. Gregor Martin, 2015. "To Invite or Not to Invite a Lobby, That Is the Question," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 15(2), pages 143-166, July.
    3. Alessandro Bonatti & Dirk Bergemann, 2012. "Markets for Data," 2012 Meeting Papers 538, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Isabelle Brocas & Juan Carrillo & Thomas Palfrey, 2012. "Information gatekeepers: theory and experimental evidence," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(3), pages 649-676, November.
    5. Ralph Boleslavsky & Christopher Cotton, 2011. "Learning More by Doing Less," Working Papers 2011-6, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    6. Vincenzo Galasso & Tommaso Nannicini, 2016. "Persuasion and Gender: Experimental Evidence from Two Political Campaigns," CESifo Working Paper Series 5868, CESifo.
    7. Mehmet Ekmekci & Nenad Kos, 2014. "Value of Information and Fairness Opinions in Takeovers," Working Papers 510, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    8. Vincenzo Galasso & Tommaso Nannicini, 2013. "Men Vote in Mars, Women Vote in Venus:A Survey Experiment in the Field," Working Papers 487, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    9. Camara, Fanny, 2019. "Avoiding Judgement by Recommending Inaction: Beliefs Manipulation and Reputational Concerns," CEPR Discussion Papers 14149, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Galasso, Vincenzo & Nannicini, Tommaso, 2016. "Persuasion and Gender: Experimental Evidence from Two Political Campaigns," CEPR Discussion Papers 11238, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    11. Yun Wang, 2015. "Bayesian Persuasion with Multiple Receivers," Working Papers 2015-03-24, Wang Yanan Institute for Studies in Economics (WISE), Xiamen University.
    12. Martin Szydlowski & Briana Chang, 2017. "The Market for Conflicted Advice," 2017 Meeting Papers 133, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli, 2014. "Persuasion with Reference Cues and Elaboration Costs," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 102, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    14. Martin Gregor, 2014. "Receiver's access fee for a single sender," Working Papers IES 2014/17, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised May 2014.
    15. Martin Gregor, 2014. "Access fees for competing lobbies," Working Papers IES 2014/22, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, revised Jul 2014.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sourav Bhattacharya & Maria Goltsman & Arijit Mukherjee, 2013. "On the Optimality of Diverse Expert Panels in Persuasion Games," Working Paper 516, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Dec 2013.
    2. Bhattacharya, Sourav & Goltsman, Maria & Mukherjee, Arijit, 2018. "On the optimality of diverse expert panels in persuasion games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 345-363.
    3. Ralph Boleslavsky & Tracy R. Lewis, 2011. "Advocacy and Dynamic Delegation," Working Papers 2011-7, University of Miami, Department of Economics.
    4. Persson, Petra, 2018. "Attention manipulation and information overload," Behavioural Public Policy, Cambridge University Press, vol. 2(1), pages 78-106, May.
    5. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2021. "Cross-Examination," Working Papers of BETA 2021-40, Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée, UDS, Strasbourg.
    6. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.
    7. Florian Hoffmann & Roman Inderst & Marco Ottaviani, 2020. "Persuasion Through Selective Disclosure: Implications for Marketing, Campaigning, and Privacy Regulation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 4958-4979, November.
    8. Eduardo Perez, 2012. "Competing with Equivocal Information," Sciences Po publications info:hdl:2441/5umu4i0hei8, Sciences Po.
    9. Simona Fabrizi & Steffen Lippert, 2012. "Due Diligence, Research Joint Ventures, and Incentives to Innovate," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 168(4), pages 588-611, December.
    10. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5umu4i0hei8jkbdr8rppdqcall is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Bruce Carlin & Christopher Cotton & Raphael Boleslavsky, 2017. "Competing For Capital: Auditing And Credibility In Financial Reporting," Working Paper 1377, Economics Department, Queen's University.
    12. Gentzkow, Matthew & Kamenica, Emir, 2017. "Bayesian persuasion with multiple senders and rich signal spaces," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 411-429.
    13. Dziuda, Wioletta, 2011. "Strategic argumentation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(4), pages 1362-1397, July.
    14. Claude Fluet & Thomas Lanzi, 2018. "Adversarial Persuasion with Cross-Examination," Cahiers de recherche 1811, Centre de recherche sur les risques, les enjeux économiques, et les politiques publiques.
    15. Ayça Özdoðan, 2016. "A Survey of Strategic Communication and Persuasion," Bogazici Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies, Bogazici University, Department of Economics, vol. 30(1), pages 1-21.
    16. Maarten C. W. Janssen & Mariya Teteryatnikova, 2017. "Mystifying but not misleading: when does political ambiguity not confuse voters?," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 172(3), pages 501-524, September.
    17. Yingni Guo, 2021. "Information transmission and voting," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 72(3), pages 835-868, October.
    18. Sylvain Bourjade & Bruno Jullien, 2011. "The roles of reputation and transparency on the behavior of biased experts," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 42(3), pages 575-594, September.
    19. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    20. Qiang Gong & Jie Shuai & Huanxing Yang, 2023. "Informational correlation and selective disclosure," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(2), pages 645-683, August.
    21. Simeon Schudy & Verena Utikal, 2015. "Does imperfect data privacy stop people from collecting personal health data?," TWI Research Paper Series 98, Thurgauer Wirtschaftsinstitut, Universität Konstanz.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17436. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.