arXiv subjects

Egor Starkov

Publications and source records attributed to Egor Starkov.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Causal Persuasion

Correlation is not causation... until the right variables are on the table. We propose a model of causal persuasion, in which a sender selectively discloses variables alongside a subjective causal model linking them. Persuasion requires that the model rules out rival explanations, on top of being consistent with the underlying data distribution. To establish a causal link, the sender often needs to disclose at most two well-chosen variables, whereas dispelling a perceived link, every common cause must be disclosed. This highlights a fundamental asymmetry: Establishing causality is often much easier than ruling it out.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Strategic Attribute Learning

A researcher allocates a budget of informative tests across multiple unknown attributes to influence a decision-maker. We derive the researcher's equilibrium learning strategy by solving an auxiliary single-player problem. The attribute weights in this problem depend on how much the researcher and the decision-maker disagree. If the researcher expects an excessive response to new information, she forgoes learning altogether. In an organizational context, we show that a manager favors more diverse analysts as the hierarchical distance grows. In another application, we show how an appropriately opposed advisor can constrain a discriminatory politician, and identify the welfare-inequality Pareto frontier of researchers.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Designing Social Learning

This paper studies strategic communication in the context of social learning. Product reviews are used by consumers to learn product quality, but in order to write a review, a consumer must be convinced to purchase the item first. When reviewers care about welfare of future consumers, this leads to a conflict: a reviewer today wants the future consumers to purchase the item even when this comes at a loss to them, so that more information is revealed for the consumers that come after. We show that due to this conflict, communication via reviews is inevitably noisy, regardless of whether reviewers can commit to a communication strategy or have to resort to cheap talk. The optimal communication mechanism involves truthful communication of extreme experiences and pools the moderate experiences together.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Optimally Biased Expertise

We show that in delegation problems, a principal benefits from belief misalignment vis-\`a-vis an agent when the latter can flexibly acquire costly information. The agent optimally succumbs to confirmatory learning, leading him to favor the ex ante optimal action. We show that the principal prefers to mitigate this by hiring an agent who is ex ante more uncertain about which action is optimal. This is optimal even when the principal is herself biased towards some action: the benefit always outweighs the cost of a small misalignment. Optimally misaligned agent considers weakly more actions than an aligned agent. All results continue to hold when delegation is replaced by communication.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2020

Only Time Will Tell: Credible Dynamic Signaling

This paper characterizes informational outcomes in a model of dynamic signaling with vanishing commitment power. It shows that contrary to popular belief, informative equilibria with payoff-relevant signaling can exist without requiring unreasonable off-path beliefs. The paper provides a sharp characterization of possible separating equilibria: all signaling must take place through attrition, when the weakest type mixes between revealing own type and pooling with the stronger types. The framework explored in the paper is general, imposing only minimal assumptions on payoff monotonicity and single-crossing. Applications to bargaining, monopoly price signaling, and labor market signaling are developed to demonstrate the results in specific contexts.

econ.TH↗