[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mtl/montec/25-2018.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Ambiguous Persuasion

Author

Listed:
  • Dorian BEAUCHÊNE
  • Jian LI
  • Ming LI
Abstract
We study a persuasion game à la Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011) where players are ambiguity averse with maxmin expected utility (Gilboa and Schmeidler, 1989). With no prior ambiguity, a Sender may choose to use ambiguous communication devices. Our main result characterizes the value of optimal ambiguous persuasion, which is often higher than what is feasible under Bayesian persuasion. We characterize posteriors that are potentially plausible when they are generated by ambiguous devices. One way to construct an optimal ambiguous communication device is by using synonyms, messages that lead to the same posteriors, in which Sender can hedge himself against ambiguity while inducing actions from Receiver that would not be possible under standard Bayesian persuasion. We also show that the use of synonyms are a necessary property of optimal and beneficial ambiguous persuasion. We consider two applications, including the well-known uniform-quadratic example. Our analysis provides a justification for how ambiguity may emerge endogenously in persuasion.

Suggested Citation

  • Dorian BEAUCHÊNE & Jian LI & Ming LI, 2018. "Ambiguous Persuasion," Cahiers de recherche 25-2018, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    • Handle: RePEc:mtl:montec:25-2018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cireqmontreal.com/wp-content/uploads/cahiers/25-2018-cah.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bade, Sophie, 2011. "Ambiguous act equilibria," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 246-260, March.
    2. Emir Kamenica & Matthew Gentzkow, 2011. "Bayesian Persuasion," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2590-2615, October.
    3. , & , & ,, 2006. "Optimal auctions with ambiguity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(4), pages 411-438, December.
    4. Elliot Lipnowski & Laurent Mathevet, 2018. "Disclosure to a Psychological Audience," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 67-93, November.
    5. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016064, September.
    6. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Aurelien Baillon & Laetitia Placido & Peter P. Wakker, 2011. "The Rich Domain of Uncertainty: Source Functions and Their Experimental Implementation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(2), pages 695-723, April.
    7. Gilboa Itzhak & Schmeidler David, 1993. "Updating Ambiguous Beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 59(1), pages 33-49, February.
    8. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107638105, September.
    9. Alexander Frankel, 2014. "Aligned Delegation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(1), pages 66-83, January.
    10. Gajdos, T. & Hayashi, T. & Tallon, J.-M. & Vergnaud, J.-C., 2008. "Attitude toward imprecise information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 140(1), pages 27-65, May.
    11. Jacques Crémer & Luis Garicano & Andrea Prat, 2007. "Language and the Theory of the Firm," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(1), pages 373-407.
    12. Chow, Clare Chua & Sarin, Rakesh K, 2001. "Comparative Ignorance and the Ellsberg Paradox," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 22(2), pages 129-139, March.
    13. Ivanov, Maxim, 2010. "Informational control and organizational design," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 721-751, March.
    14. Larry G. Epstein & Martin Schneider, 2010. "Ambiguity and Asset Markets," Annual Review of Financial Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 2(1), pages 315-346, December.
    15. ,, 2011. "Dynamic choice under ambiguity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(3), September.
    16. Camerer, Colin & Weber, Martin, 1992. "Recent Developments in Modeling Preferences: Uncertainty and Ambiguity," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 325-370, October.
    17. Subir Bose & Ludovic Renou, 2014. "Mechanism Design With Ambiguous Communication Devices," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 82(5), pages 1853-1872, September.
    18. Fabio Maccheroni & Massimo Marinacci & Aldo Rustichini, 2006. "Ambiguity Aversion, Robustness, and the Variational Representation of Preferences," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1447-1498, November.
    19. Alonso, Ricardo & Câmara, Odilon, 2016. "Bayesian persuasion with heterogeneous priors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 672-706.
    20. Larry G. Epstein & Martin Schneider, 2007. "Learning Under Ambiguity," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 74(4), pages 1275-1303.
    21. Kellner, Christian & Le Quement, Mark T., 2017. "Modes of ambiguous communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 271-292.
    22. Yoram Halevy, 2007. "Ellsberg Revisited: An Experimental Study," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 75(2), pages 503-536, March.
    23. Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Subjective Probability and Expected Utility without Additivity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 57(3), pages 571-587, May.
    24. Peter Klibanoff & Massimo Marinacci & Sujoy Mukerji, 2005. "A Smooth Model of Decision Making under Ambiguity," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(6), pages 1849-1892, November.
    25. Marie Laclau & Ludovic Renou, 2016. "Public Persuasion," Working Papers hal-01285218, HAL.
    26. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    27. Robert J. Aumann, 1995. "Repeated Games with Incomplete Information," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262011476, April.
    28. Craig R. Fox & Amos Tversky, 1995. "Ambiguity Aversion and Comparative Ignorance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 110(3), pages 585-603.
    29. Alfredo Di Tillio & Nenad Kos & Matthias Messner, 2012. "The Design of Ambiguous Mechanisms," Working Papers 446, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    30. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016057, September.
    31. Epstein, Larry G. & Schneider, Martin, 2003. "Recursive multiple-priors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 1-31, November.
    32. Peter Bossaerts & Paolo Ghirardato & Serena Guarnaschelli & William R. Zame, 2010. "Ambiguity in Asset Markets: Theory and Experiment," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 23(4), pages 1325-1359, April.
    33. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107674165, September.
    34. Cesaltina Pacheco Pires, 2002. "A Rule For Updating Ambiguous Beliefs," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 137-152, September.
    35. Sujoy Mukerji & Jean-Marc Tallon & EUREQua & CNRS - Universite Paris I., 2003. "An overview of economic applications of David Schmeidler`s models of decision making under uncertainty," Economics Series Working Papers 165, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    36. Wolitzky, Alexander, 2016. "Mechanism design with maxmin agents: theory and an application to bilateral trade," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), September.
    37. Mehdi Ayouni & Frédéric Koessler, 2017. "Hard evidence and ambiguity aversion," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 82(3), pages 327-339, March.
    38. Kellner, Christian & Le Quement, Mark T., 2018. "Endogenous ambiguity in cheap talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 1-17.
    39. repec:oup:restud:v:84:y::i:1:p:237-276. is not listed on IDEAS
    40. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107627314, September.
    41. Acemoglu,Daron & Arellano,Manuel & Dekel,Eddie (ed.), 2013. "Advances in Economics and Econometrics," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9781107016040, September.
    42. Jean-Yves Jaffray & Fabrice Philippe, 1997. "On the Existence of Subjective Upper and Lower Probabilities," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 22(1), pages 165-185, February.
    43. Lopomo, Giuseppe & Rigotti, Luca & Shannon, Chris, 2011. "Knightian uncertainty and moral hazard," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(3), pages 1148-1172, May.
    44. 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)

    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. Karni, Edi & Maccheroni, Fabio & Marinacci, Massimo, 2015. "Ambiguity and Nonexpected Utility," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Eran Hanany & Peter Klibanoff & Sujoy Mukerji, 2020. "Incomplete Information Games with Ambiguity Averse Players," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 135-187, May.
    3. Craig S. Webb, 2017. "Purely subjective variational preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 64(1), pages 121-137, June.
    4. Takashi Ui, 2021. "Strategic Ambiguity in Global Games," Working Papers on Central Bank Communication 032, University of Tokyo, Graduate School of Economics.
    5. Eisei Ohtaki & Hiroyuki Ozaki, 2015. "Monetary equilibria and Knightian uncertainty," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(3), pages 435-459, August.
    6. Massimo Marinacci, 2015. "Model Uncertainty," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 13(6), pages 1022-1100, December.
    7. Robin Cubitt & Gijs van de Kuilen & Sujoy Mukerji, 2020. "Discriminating Between Models of Ambiguity Attitude: a Qualitative Test," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 18(2), pages 708-749.
    8. Florian H. Schneider & Martin Schonger, 2019. "An Experimental Test of the Anscombe–Aumann Monotonicity Axiom," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 1667-1677, April.
    9. Ilke Aydogan & Lo?c Berger & Valentina Bosetti & Ning Liu, 2018. "Three Layers of Uncertainty: an Experiment," Working Papers 2018.24, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    10. Feng, Xin, 2024. "Ambiguous persuasion in contests," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 220(C), pages 182-201.
    11. Kellner, Christian & Le Quement, Mark T., 2018. "Endogenous ambiguity in cheap talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 1-17.
    12. Larry G Epstein & Yoram Halevy, 2024. "Hard-to-Interpret Signals," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 22(1), pages 393-427.
    13. Grant, Simon & Stauber, Ronald, 2022. "Delegation and ambiguity in correlated equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 487-509.
    14. Robin Cubitt & Gijs Kuilen & Sujoy Mukerji, 2018. "The strength of sensitivity to ambiguity," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 85(3), pages 275-302, October.
    15. Diederik Aerts & Emmanuel Haven & Sandro Sozzo, 2016. "A Proposal to Extend Expected Utility in a Quantum Probabilistic Framework," Papers 1612.08583, arXiv.org.
    16. Evren, Özgür, 2019. "Recursive non-expected utility: Connecting ambiguity attitudes to risk preferences and the level of ambiguity," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 285-307.
    17. Georgalos, Konstantinos, 2021. "Dynamic decision making under ambiguity: An experimental investigation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 28-46.
    18. Yang, Jian, 2018. "Game-theoretic modeling of players’ ambiguities on external factors," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 31-56.
    19. Massimo Guidolin & Francesca Rinaldi, 2013. "Ambiguity in asset pricing and portfolio choice: a review of the literature," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 74(2), pages 183-217, February.
    20. Denis Shishkin & Pietro Ortoleva, 2021. "Ambiguous Information and Dilation: An Experiment," Working Papers 2020-53, Princeton University. Economics Department..

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bayesian persuasion; ambiguity aversion; information transmission;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D81 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Criteria for Decision-Making under Risk and Uncertainty
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:mtl:montec:25-2018. 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: Sharon BREWER (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cdmtlca.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.