Dynamic Competition for Attention

Department of Economics and Decision Sciences

Speaker : Jan Knöpfler (Queen Mary)

Room T-006

Abstract :

This paper studies information transmission from multiple senders who compete for the attention of a decision maker. Senders are partially informed about a state and decide how to reveal information over time to maximise attention. A decision maker wants to learn about the state but faces an attention cost.

We derive a condition on the informational environment and the decision problem that guarantees that all information can be transmitted in equilibrium. A simple class of information processes implements full transmission across general environments. The attention each sender receives is proportional to the residual value of her information.