This study develops a model of dynamic persuasion. A sender has a fixed number of arguments that contain information about the quality of his proposal, each of which is either favorable or unfavorable. The sender may try to persuade a decision maker (DM) that she has enough favorable arguments by sequentially revealing at most one argument at a time. Presenting argument is costly for the sender and delaying decisions is costly for the DM. In this dynamic game of persuasion, the sender effectively chooses when to give up persuasion and the DM decides when to make a decision. Resolving the strategic tension requires probabilistic behavior from both parties. Typically, the DM will accept the sender’s proposal even when she knows that the sender’s proposal may be overall unfavorable. Also, the sender’s net gain from engaging in persuasion can be negative on the equilibrium path, even when persuasion is successful. We characterize the equilibrium that maximizes the DM.s payoff, and perform comparative statics in the costs of persuasion on the equilibrium. We further characterize the DM.s optimal stochastic commitment rule as well as the optimal non-stochastic commitment rule.
