arXiv subjects

Roberto Corrao

Publications and source records attributed to Roberto Corrao.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2023

Persuasion and Matching: Optimal Productive Transport

We consider general Bayesian persuasion problems where the receiver's utility is single-peaked in a one-dimensional action. We show that a signal that pools at most two states in each realization is always optimal, and that such pairwise signals are the only solutions under a non-singularity condition (the twist condition). Our core results provide conditions under which riskier prospects induce higher or lower actions, so that the induced action is single-dipped or single-peaked on each set of nested prospects. We also provide conditions for the optimality of either full disclosure or negative assortative disclosure, where all prospects are nested. Methodologically, our results rely on novel duality and complementary slackness theorems. Our analysis extends to a general problem of assigning one-dimensional inputs to productive units, which we call optimal productive transport. This problem covers additional applications including club economies (assigning workers to firms, or students to schools), robust option pricing (assigning future asset prices to price distributions), and partisan gerrymandering (assigning voters to districts).

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

The Bounds of Mediated Communication

We study sender-receiver games with transparent motives, where an uninformed, sender-aligned mediator commits to a communication mechanism but cannot verify the sender's report. We compare mediated communication with cheap talk and Bayesian persuasion. A belief-value distribution is implementable by mediation exactly when it satisfies Bayes plausibility, receiver obedience, and zero covariance between posterior beliefs and sender values. This formulation separates the roles of commitment and verifiability. We show that mediation attains the persuasion value only when cheap talk also does; thus, whenever persuasion strictly outperforms cheap talk, unverifiable reports create a strict loss. We characterize when mediation strictly improves on cheap talk: the sender's value must exhibit countervailing effects along some direction in belief space. In finite-action, binary-state environments, this characterization yields a tractable description of optimal mediation. Applications cover platforms, lobbying, acceptance games, and a reinterpretation of the model as matching with externalities, where we study the efficiency-fairness tradeoff.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2022

Persuasion with Non-Linear Preferences

In persuasion problems where the receiver's action is one-dimensional and his utility is single-peaked, optimal signals are characterized by duality, based on a first-order approach to the receiver's problem. A signal is optimal iff the induced joint distribution over states and actions is supported on a compact set (the contact set) where the dual constraint binds. A signal that pools at most two states in each realization is always optimal, and such pairwise signals are the only solutions under a non-singularity condition on utilities (the twist condition). We provide conditions under which higher actions are induced at more or less extreme pairs of states. Finally, we provide conditions for the optimality of either full disclosure or negative assortative disclosure, where signal realizations can be ordered from least to most extreme. Optimal negative assortative disclosure is characterized as the solution to a pair of ordinary differential equations.

econ.TH↗