The Economics of Persuasion and Strategic Information Manipulation Inaugural Lecture by Professor Andy Zapechelnyuk, School of Economics and Finance

Persuasion is the strategic control of information with the purpose of convincing someone to make certain decisions. In this talk Professor Zapechelnyuk will discuss challenges of a rigorous formalism and modelling of persuasion, as well as insights derived from such models.

He will also touch upon a few diverse applications, including the problem of manipulation of the public opinion by media censoring, the comparative role of free and moderated public debates in democracy, and the reasons for (and potential countermeasures to) the prevalence of fake consumer reviews of new products on major internet sales portals.