Bayesian Persuasion without Commitment

TL;DR

This paper presents a model of persuasion where a sender privately gathers information and discloses it without commitment, yet can achieve the same payoff as in full commitment scenarios under general conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel model of persuasion without commitment, demonstrating that the sender can attain full-commitment payoffs despite uncertainty about disclosure.

Findings

Sender can achieve full-commitment payoffs without commitment.

Uncertainty about sender's information gathering does not hinder optimal persuasion.

Model applies under general conditions, broadening persuasion theory.

Abstract

We introduce a model of persuasion in which a sender without any commitment power privately gathers information about an unknown state of the world and then chooses what to verifiably disclose to a receiver. The receiver does not know how many experiments the sender is able to run, and may therefore be uncertain as to whether the sender disclosed all of her information. Despite this challenge, we show that, under general conditions, the sender is able to achieve the same payoff as in the full-commitment Bayesian persuasion case.