arXiv subjects

Doron Ravid

Publications and source records attributed to Doron Ravid.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Communicating About Endogenous Issues

Limited attention forces organizations to decide not only how much to discuss, but also which issues merit discussion. We study strategic communication about a multidimensional decision when a receiver can respond only along a few endogenously chosen issues. Players agree on the ideal action but prioritize different errors. In equilibrium, communicated and omitted issues must be statistically unrelated and separable according to the sender's preferences. Thus, the sender's priorities determine the agenda; the receiver's do not. Synchronized priorities raise the receiver's best equilibrium payoff but lower his worst, so he may prefer a less synchronized sender.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Perfect Bayesian Persuasion

A sender commits to an experiment to persuade a receiver. Accounting for the sender's experiment-choice incentives, and not presupposing a receiver tie-breaking rule when indifferent, we characterize when the sender's equilibrium payoff is unique and so coincides with her "Bayesian persuasion" value. A sufficient condition in finite models is that every action which is receiver-optimal at some belief is uniquely optimal at some other belief -- a generic property. We similarly show the equilibrium sender payoff is typically unique in ordered models. In an extension, we show uniqueness generates robustness to imperfect sender commitment.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Robust Predictions in Games with Rational Inattention

We derive robust predictions in games involving flexible information acquisition, also known as rational inattention (Sims 2003). These predictions remain accurate regardless of the specific methods players employ to gather information. Compared to scenarios where information is predetermined, rational inattention reduces welfare and introduces additional constraints on behavior. We show these constraints generically do not bind; the two knowledge regimes are behaviorally indistinguishable in most environments. Yet, we demonstrate the welfare difference they generate is substantial: optimal policy depends on whether one assumes information is given or acquired. We provide the necessary tools for policy analysis in this context.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Predicting Choice from Information Costs

An agent acquires a costly flexible signal before making a decision. We explore to what degree knowledge of the agent's information costs helps predict her behavior. We establish an impossibility result: learning costs alone generate no testable restrictions on choice without also imposing constraints on actions' state-dependent utilities. By contrast, choices from a menu often uniquely pin down the agent's decisions in all submenus. To prove the latter result, we define iteratively differentiable cost functions, a tractable class amenable to first-order techniques. Finally, we construct tight tests for a multi-menu data set to be consistent with a given cost.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Monopoly, Product Quality, and Costly Information

A seller offers a buyer a schedule of transfers and associated product qualities. After observing this schedule, the buyer chooses a flexible costly signal about his type. We show it is without loss to focus on a class of allocations that compensate the buyer for his marginal learning costs. In the optimal menu, all types typically receive lower-than-efficient quality (including ``at the top''). Moreover, profits are non-monotonic in the level of information costs, and the consumer may be better off when such costs are low than when information is free. When learning costs are steep, the optimal menu contains at most two purchasing options.

econ.TH↗