IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/13441.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Strategic Interpretations

Author

Listed:
  • Eliaz, Kfir
  • Spiegler, Ran
  • Thysen, Heidi C

Abstract

We study strategic communication when the sender can influence the receiver's understanding of messages' equilibrium meaning. We focus on a "pure persuasion" setting, in which the informed sender wants the uninformed receiver to always choose "accept". The sender's strategy maps each state of Nature to a distribution over pairs consisting of: (i) a multi-dimensional message, and (ii) a "dictionary" that credibly discloses the state-dependent distribution of some of the messsage's components. The receiver does not know the sender's strategy by default; he can only interpret message components that are covered by the dictionary he is provided with. We characterize the sender's optimal persuasion strategy and show that full persuasion is possible when the prior on the acceptance state exceeds a threshold that quickly decreases with message dimensionality. We extend our analysis to situations where interpretation of messages is done by a third party with uncertain preferences, and explore alternative notions of "dictionaries".

Suggested Citation

  • Eliaz, Kfir & Spiegler, Ran & Thysen, Heidi C, 2019. "Strategic Interpretations," CEPR Discussion Papers 13441, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:13441
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP13441
    Download Restriction: 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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. ,, 2011. "Manipulative auction design," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(2), May.
    2. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    3. Jehiel, Philippe, 2005. "Analogy-based expectation equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 123(2), pages 81-104, August.
    4. Prat, Andrea & Kennedy, Patrick, 2017. "Where Do People Get Their News?," CEPR Discussion Papers 12426, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    5. Jacob Glazer & Ariel Rubinstein, 2014. "Complex Questionnaires," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(4), pages 1529-1541, July.
    6. Jacob Glazer & Ariel Rubinstein, 2012. "A Model of Persuasion with Boundedly Rational Agents," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 120(6), pages 1057-1082.
    7. , & ,, 2006. "A study in the pragmatics of persuasion: a game theoretical approach," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 395-410, December.
    8. Spiegler, Ran, 2018. "News and Archival Information in Games," CEPR Discussion Papers 12805, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Jacob Glazer & Ariel Rubinstein, 2004. "On Optimal Rules of Persuasion," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 72(6), pages 1715-1736, November.
    10. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Joshua Schwartzstein & Adi Sunderam, 2021. "Using Models to Persuade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 111(1), pages 276-323, January.
    2. Hagenbach, Jeanne & Koessler, Frédéric, 2020. "Cheap talk with coarse understanding," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 105-121.
    3. Eliaz, Kfir & Spiegler, Ran & Thysen, Heidi C., 2021. "Persuasion with endogenous misspecified beliefs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    4. Spiegler, Ran, 2021. "Modeling players with random “data access”," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).

    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. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo, 2018. "Rational attitude change by reference cues when information elaboration requires effort," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 90-107.
    2. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli, 2014. "Persuasion with Reference Cues and Elaboration Costs," Working Papers - Economics wp2014_04.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    3. Alessandro Ispano & Péter Vida, 2020. "Custodial Interrogations," THEMA Working Papers 2020-05, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    4. Penczynski, Stefan P., 2016. "Persuasion: An experimental study of team decision making," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 244-261.
    5. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    6. Penélope Hernández & Bernhard von Stengel, 2014. "Nash Codes for Noisy Channels," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1221-1235, December.
    7. Miura, Shintaro, 2014. "A characterization of equilibrium set of persuasion games with binary actions," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 55-68.
    8. Eliaz, Kfir & Spiegler, Ran & Thysen, Heidi C., 2021. "Persuasion with endogenous misspecified beliefs," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    9. Hagenbach, Jeanne & Koessler, Frédéric, 2020. "Cheap talk with coarse understanding," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 105-121.
    10. Joanna Franaszek, 2021. "When Competence Hurts: Revelation of Complex Information," Gospodarka Narodowa. The Polish Journal of Economics, Warsaw School of Economics, issue 3, pages 5-23.
    11. Winand Emons & Claude Fluet, 2019. "Strategic communication with reporting costs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 87(3), pages 341-363, October.
    12. Evans, R., Reiche, S. & Reiche, S., 2022. "When is a Contrarian Adviser Optimal?," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2222, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    13. Sendhil Mullainathan & Joshua Schwartzstein & Andrei Shleifer, 2008. "Coarse Thinking and Persuasion," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(2), pages 577-619.
    14. Jeanne Hagenbach & Frédéric Koessler, 2019. "Partial Language Competence," Working Papers hal-03393108, HAL.
    15. Tsakas, Elias & Tsakas, Nikolas, 2021. "Noisy persuasion," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 44-61.
    16. Eliaz, Kfir & Spiegler, Ran & Thysen, Heidi C., 2021. "Persuasion with endogenous misspecified beliefs," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 109842, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    17. Kolotilin, Anton, 2015. "Experimental design to persuade," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 215-226.
    18. Bianchi, Milo & Jehiel, Philippe, 2015. "Financial reporting and market efficiency with extrapolative investors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 842-878.
    19. Frédéric Koessler & Eduardo Perez-Richet, 2019. "Evidence reading mechanisms," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 53(3), pages 375-397, October.
    20. Silva, Francisco, 2019. "Renegotiation proof mechanism design with imperfect type verification," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(3), July.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:cpr:ceprdp:13441. 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://www.cepr.org .

    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.