2025/04/02 by Mensch, Jeffrey · 1 citation
#FOS: Economics and business #Theoretical Economics (econ.TH)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2504.01829
How does one test empirically the hypothesis that a decision maker (DM) is being influenced by information via Bayesian persuasion? In this paper, I consider a DM whose state-dependent preferences are known to an analyst, who sees the conditional distribution of choices given the state. I provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the dataset to be consistent with the DM being Bayesian persuaded by an unobserved sender who generates a distribution of signals to ex-ante optimize the sender's expected payoff. I thereby provide a tool for empirical work on information design.