Algorithms for persuasion with limited communication

Ronen Gradwohl, Niklas Hahn, Martin Hoefer, Rann Smorodinsky

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

6 Scopus citations

Abstract

The Bayesian persuasion paradigm of strategic communication models interaction between a privately-informed agent, called the sender, and an ignorant but rational agent, called the receiver. The goal is typically to design a (near-)optimal communication (or signaling) scheme for the sender. It enables the sender to disclose information to the receiver in a way as to incentivize her to take an action that is preferred by the sender. Finding the optimal signaling scheme is known to be computationally difficult in general. This hardness is further exacerbated when there is also a constraint on the size of the message space, leading to NP-hardness of approximating the optimal sender utility within any constant factor. In this paper, we show that in several natural and prominent cases the optimization problem is tractable even when the message space is limited. In particular, we study signaling under a symmetry or an independence assumption on the distribution of utility values for the actions. For symmetric distributions, we provide a novel characterization of the optimal signaling scheme. It results in a polynomial-time algorithm to compute an optimal scheme for many compactly represented symmetric distributions. In the independent case, we design a constant-factor approximation algorithm, which stands in marked contrast to the hardness of approximation in the general case.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2021
EditorsDaniel Marx
Pages637-652
Number of pages16
ISBN (Electronic)9781611976465
StatePublished - 2021
Event32nd Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2021 - Alexandria, Virtual, United States
Duration: 10 Jan 202113 Jan 2021

Publication series

NameProceedings of the Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms

Conference

Conference32nd Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, SODA 2021
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAlexandria, Virtual
Period10/01/2113/01/21

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