Delegated Persuasion

Abstract

We study a delegation problem within a Bayesian persuasion framework with the aim of understanding the incentive design of representatives. We are doing so by adding a preplay stage to the standard Bayesian persuasion model in which the receiver is allowed to choose a representative in order to make the decision on his behalf. Our main result shows that in a binary action model the receiver can choose a representative such that his expected payoff is the maximal payoff subject to the constraint that the sender receives, which is an expected payoff of at least the one that is obtained from the worst constant action for him. Our approach is constructive. We further show by means of an example that our main result cannot be generalized beyond the binary action case.

Keywords: Bayesian persuasion, Delegation, Information design