Noisy Persuasion

Abstract

We study the effect of noise due to exogenous information distortions in the context of Bayesian persuasion. In particular, we ask whether more noise is always harmful for the information designer (viz., the sender). We show that in general this is not the case. That is, more noise is often beneficial for the sender. However, when we compare noisy channels with "similar basic structures", more noise cannot be beneficial for the sender. We apply our theory to applications from the literatures on voting and cognitive biases.

Keywords: Bayesian Persuasion; Data Distortions; Optimal Signal; Garbling.

JEL Classification: C72, D72, D82, D83, K40, M31