Keeping the Listener Engaged: a Dynamic Model of Bayesian Persuasion

We consider a dynamic model of Bayesian persuasion. At each point in time, the sender chooses an experiment to persuade the receiver. There is a constraint on the flow information that forces the sender to persuade the receiver gradually, and delay is costly for the sender and the receiver. To keep the receiver waiting, the sender must leave some rent that compensates for the cost of waiting. The sender cannot commit to the choice of future experiments. We consider Markov perfect equilibria of the game and analyze the limit as the cost of delay vanished. We compare the set of equilibria to the optimal experiment in Kamenica-Gentzkow (2011), and the experiment that fully reveals the state.