Partial information disclosure in a contest

Abstract

Zhang and Zhou (2016) use the concept of Bayesian persuasion due to Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011) to analyze information disclosure in a contest with one-sided asymmetric information. They show that an effort-maximizing designer can manipulate information disclosure to increase expected efforts in the contest, based upon active contest participation by all types of the informed player. We allow some informed types to exert no effort in the contest, showing how this (i) can increase the applicability of the previous results, and (ii) in some cases, can change the type of information disclosure.