Optimal Information Design in Sender-Receiver Cheap Talk Interactions

Itai Arieli; Ivan Geffner; Moshe Tennenholtz

doi:10.4204/EPTCS.437.5

Optimal Information Design in Sender-Receiver Cheap Talk Interactions

Itai Arieli
, Ivan Geffner
, Moshe Tennenholtz

Technion-Israel Institute of Technology

Research output: Contribution to journal › Conference article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This paper considers the dynamics of cheap talk interactions between an oblivious receiver and a sender with different amounts of information. Even though it may seem that having additional information about the state of the game is always beneficial to the sender, we show that there are cases in which garbling the information of a fully informed sender can improve not only receiver’s utility in equilibrium, but also that of the sender herself. We also provide efficient algorithms that output the optimal amount of information in sender-receiver scenarios with binary actions and extend some of these results to settings with multiple senders and one receiver.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	31-45
Number of pages	15
Journal	Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS
Volume	437
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.4204/EPTCS.437.5
Publication status	Published - 27 Nov 2025
Event	20th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, TARK 2025 - Düsseldorf, Germany Duration: 14 Jul 2025 → 16 Jul 2025

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© I. Arieli, I. Geffner & M. Tennenholtz.

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10.4204/EPTCS.437.5Licence: CC BY

Optimal Information Design in Sender-Receiver Cheap Talk InteractionsFinal published version, 166 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Optimal Information Design in Sender-Receiver Cheap Talk Interactions",

abstract = "This paper considers the dynamics of cheap talk interactions between an oblivious receiver and a sender with different amounts of information. Even though it may seem that having additional information about the state of the game is always beneficial to the sender, we show that there are cases in which garbling the information of a fully informed sender can improve not only receiver{\textquoteright}s utility in equilibrium, but also that of the sender herself. We also provide efficient algorithms that output the optimal amount of information in sender-receiver scenarios with binary actions and extend some of these results to settings with multiple senders and one receiver.",

author = "Itai Arieli and Ivan Geffner and Moshe Tennenholtz",

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AU - Arieli, Itai

AU - Geffner, Ivan

AU - Tennenholtz, Moshe

N1 - Publisher Copyright: © I. Arieli, I. Geffner & M. Tennenholtz.

PY - 2025/11/27

Y1 - 2025/11/27

N2 - This paper considers the dynamics of cheap talk interactions between an oblivious receiver and a sender with different amounts of information. Even though it may seem that having additional information about the state of the game is always beneficial to the sender, we show that there are cases in which garbling the information of a fully informed sender can improve not only receiver’s utility in equilibrium, but also that of the sender herself. We also provide efficient algorithms that output the optimal amount of information in sender-receiver scenarios with binary actions and extend some of these results to settings with multiple senders and one receiver.

AB - This paper considers the dynamics of cheap talk interactions between an oblivious receiver and a sender with different amounts of information. Even though it may seem that having additional information about the state of the game is always beneficial to the sender, we show that there are cases in which garbling the information of a fully informed sender can improve not only receiver’s utility in equilibrium, but also that of the sender herself. We also provide efficient algorithms that output the optimal amount of information in sender-receiver scenarios with binary actions and extend some of these results to settings with multiple senders and one receiver.

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DO - 10.4204/EPTCS.437.5

M3 - Conference article

AN - SCOPUS:105024305182

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JO - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS

JF - Electronic Proceedings in Theoretical Computer Science, EPTCS

T2 - 20th Conference on Theoretical Aspects of Rationality and Knowledge, TARK 2025

Y2 - 14 July 2025 through 16 July 2025

ER -

Optimal Information Design in Sender-Receiver Cheap Talk Interactions

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