Revealed Bayesian Persuasion
Theoretical Economics
2026-05-13 v4
Abstract
How does one test empirically the hypothesis that a decision maker (DM) is being influenced by information via Bayesian persuasion? In this paper, I consider a DM whose state-dependent preferences are known to an analyst, who sees the conditional distribution of choices given the state. I provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the dataset to be consistent with the DM being Bayesian persuaded by an unobserved sender who generates a distribution of signals to ex-ante optimize the sender's expected payoff. I thereby provide a tool for empirical work on information design.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2504.01829,
title = {Revealed Bayesian Persuasion},
author = {Jeffrey Mensch},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2504.01829},
year = {2026}
}