Reaping the Informational Surplus in Bayesian Persuasion

Abstract

The Bayesian persuasion model studies communication between an informed sender and a receiver with a payoff-relevant action, emphasizing the ability of a sender to extract maximal surplus from his informational advantage. In this paper, we study a setting with multiple senders in which the receiver is restricted to choosing, at the interim stage, one sender with whom to interact. Our main result is that whenever senders are uncertain about each other’s preferences and, in particular, cannot dismiss with certainty the possibility that others are aligned with the receiver, the receiver receives all the informational surplus in all equilibria. (JEL C72, D82, D83)