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arXiv · 2504.01829

Revealed Bayesian Persuasion

Jeffrey Mensch
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Abstract

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.

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Jeffrey Mensch. 2025-04-02. Revealed Bayesian Persuasion. https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.01829

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