Bayesian Persuasion With Costly Information Acquisition.

Abstract: We consider a Bayesian persuasion model in which the receiver can gather independent information about the state at a uniformly posterior-separable cost. We show that the sender provides information that prevents the receiver from gathering independent information in equilibrium. When the receiver faces a lower cost of information, her `threat’ of gathering independent information increases, thus decreasing the sender’s power to persuade. A lower cost of information can also hurt the receiver because the sender may provide strictly less information in equilibrium. Finally, we propose a solution method that can be used to solve our model in specific applications.