Working Papers

April 2022

1. Persuasion with Verifiable Information Titova, Maria new draft! Abstract Paper Slides

   This paper studies how an informed sender with state-independent preferences persuades receivers to approve his proposal with verifiable information. I find that every equilibrium outcome is characterized by each receiver’s set of approved states that satisfies that receiver’s obedience and the sender’s incentive-compatibility constraint for that receiver. In the sender-worst equilibrium, information unravels, and receivers act as if fully informed. The sender-preferred equilibrium outcome is the commitment outcome of the Bayesian persuasion game. Consequently, when the sender’s preferences are state-independent and the receivers choose between two actions, the sender reaches the full commitment payoff with evidence and without any commitment power, as long as the message space is sufficiently rich.

   
   

March 2022

1. Targeted Advertising in Elections Titova, Maria draft coming soon! Abstract Slides

   This paper studies how an informed, office-motivated challenger persuades voters to elect him over the status quo. I compare targeted advertising to public disclosure and show that the challenger may win otherwise unwinnable elections by communicating with the voters privately. The challenger’s odds of swinging unwinnable elections increase as the electorate becomes more polarized.

   
   

April 2021

1. Collaborative Search for a Public Good Titova, Maria working paper, 2021 Abstract Paper Slides

   This paper studies a model of costly sequential search among risky alternatives performed by a group of agents. The learning process stops, and the best uncovered option is implemented when the agents unanimously agree to stop or when all the projects have been researched. Both the implemented project and all the information gathered during the search process are public goods. I show that the equilibrium path implements the same project based on the same information gathered in the same order as the social planner. At the same time, due to free riding, search in teams leads to a delay at each stage of the learning process, which grows with search costs. Consequently, the team manager prefers to delegate the search to an individual agent. In contrast, every agent prefers searching with a partner, since she collects the same reward but only pays the search cost half the time.

   
   

Publications

2018

1. Shopping Malls, Platforms and Consumer Search Parakhonyak, Alexei, and Titova, Maria International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2018 Abstract Paper Slides

   We consider a model of a market for differentiated goods in which firms are located in marketplaces e.g., shopping malls or platforms. There are search frictions between marketplaces, but not within. Marketplaces differ in size. We show that an equilibrium in which consumers start their search at the largest marketplace and continue in the descending order of size, always exists. Despite charging lower prices, firms in larger marketplaces earn higher profits. Under free entry, all firms cluster in one marketplace provided that search frictions are large enough. If a marketplace determines the price of entry, then the equilibrium marketplace size is a single-peaked function of search costs and is decreasing for most of the search cost range.