Strategic ignorance and information design

Ina Taneva, Thomas Wiseman

Research output: Working paper

Abstract / Description of output

We study information design in strategic settings when agents can publicly commit to not view their private signals. Ignoring the constraints that agents must be willing to view their signals may lead to substantial divergence between the designer’s intent and actual outcomes, even in the case where the designer seeks to maximize the agents’ payoffs. We introduce the appropriate equilibrium concept —robust correlated equilibrium — and characterize implementable distributions over states and actions. Requiring robustness to strategic ignorance can explain qualitative properties that standard information design cannot: the designer may provide redundant or even counterproductive information, asymmetric information structures may be strictly optimal in symmetric environments, providing information conditional on players’ choices rather than all at once may hurt the designer, and communication between players may help her. Optimality may require that players ignore their signals with positive probability.
Original languageEnglish
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - Mar 2023

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