We analyze a model of competition in Bayesian persuasion in which two or more senders vie for the patronage of a receiver by disclosing information about their respective proposals. We first establish equilibrium existence for the model of a general state space. We then focus on a binary state space, i.e., each sender’s proposal gives the receiver either a high or low utility. With two (possibly asymmetric) senders, we fully characterize the generically unique equilibrium, and show that it has a simple linear structure. We find that a sender who faces a stronger opponent engages in more aggressive disclosure in terms of second-order stochastic dominance. With multiple symmetric senders, we fully characterize the unique symmetric equilibrium. We then show that all senders engage in full disclosure in the limit as the number of senders goes to infinity. Finally, we show that the finding that equilibrium strategy must exhibit a linear structure remains valid locally for any finite state space.

Competition in Information Disclosure

Wed 5 Oct 2016 11:00am12:00pm

Venue

Room 629, Colin Clark Building (#39)