Experimental Design to Persuade

Abstract

A sender chooses ex ante how information will be disclosed ex post. A receiver obtains public information and information disclosed by the sender. Then he takes one of two actions. The sender wishes to maximize the probability that the receiver takes the desired action. I show that the sender optimally discloses only whether the receivers utility is above a cutoff. I derive necessary and sufficient conditions for the senders and receivers welfare to be monotonic in information. Most notably, the senders welfare increases with the precision of the senders potential information and decreases with the precision of public information.

Keywords: information, disclosure, persuasion, stochastic orders

JEL Classification: C44, D81, D82, D83