This is an advanced course in economic theory. The course is intended primarily for PhD students interested in information economics who are transitioning into doing research on the topic.
At the core of economic decision-making lie incentives, which can be affected through transfers (in the form of rewards and punishments) or information transmission (in the form of communication and persuasion). The latter is the topic of this course. In this course, we look at the recent developments in information design and communication models in economic theory.

Course outline
Here is an outline of the material that we will cover:

Chapter 1 - By Laurent Mathevet
 

Foundations of Incomplete Information (4h - 2 classes)
 

1. Common Knowledge and Rationality

        1.1 Agree to Disagree

        1.2 Email Game

        2.1 Harsanyi Type Spaces

        2.2 Infinite Hierarchies of Beliefs

        2.3 (Bayes Nash) Equilibrium and Rationalisability

        2.4 Bayes Correlated Equilibrium

Information Design (6h - 3 classes) 
 

                    1. Formulation, Taneva (2019)

                    2.Comparison to Cheap Talk, Crawford and Sobel (1982)

                    3. Dynamic Foundation, Mathevet, Pearce, and Stacchetti (2018
                    4. Bayesian Persuasion, Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011); 
                        Lipnowski and Mathevet (2018) (psychological audience)
                    5. Many Players: 
                        - Direct-Revelation Approach, Taneva (2019)
                        - Belief-Based Approach, Mathevet and Taneva (2020)

 

Aboutalebi, Zeinab and Ayush Pant. 2022. “Effective Supervison.” Working Paper. Aumann, Robert J. and Sergiu Hart. 2003.                                      
“Long Cheap Talk.” Econometrica 71 (6):1619–1660.
Aumann, Robert J. and Michael B. Maschler. 1995. Repeated Games with Incomplete Information. Cambridge: MA: MIT Press.
Crawford, Vincent P. and Joel Sobel. 1982. “Strategic Information Transmission.” Econometrica 50 (6):1431–51.
Ely, Jeffrey C. 2017. “Beeps.” American Economic Review 107 (1):31–53.
Henry, Emeric and Marco Ottaviani. 2019. “Research and the Approval Process: The Organization of Persuasion.” American Economic Review 109 (3):911–55.
Hoerner, Johannes and Andrzej Skrzypacz. 2016. “Selling Information.” Journal of Political Economy 124 (6):1515–1562.
Kamenica, Emir and Matthew Gentzkow. 2011. “Bayesian Persuasion.” American Economic Review 101 (6):2590–2615.
Kremer, Ilan, Yishay Mansour, and Motty Perry. 2014. “Implementing the “Wisdom of the Crowd”.” Journal of Political Economy 122 (5):988–1012.
Lipnowski, Elliot and Laurent Mathevet. 2018. “Disclosure to a Psychological Audi- ence.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 10 (4):67–93.
Mathevet, Laurent, David Pearce, and Ennio Stacchetti. 2018. “Reputation and Infor- mation Design.” WP, New York University.
Mathevet, Laurent and Ina Taneva. 2020.   “Organized Information Transmission.” Working Paper.
Taneva, Ina. 2019. “Information Design.” American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 11 (4):151–85.