We set up an econometric model of persuasion and study identification of key parameters under various scenarios of data availability. We find that a commonly used measure of persuasion does not estimate the persuasion rate of any population in general. We provide formal identification results, recommend several new parameters to estimate, and discuss their interpretation. We revisit two strands of the empirical literature on persuasion to show that the persuasive effect is highly heterogeneous and studies based on binary instruments provide limited information about the average persuasion rate in a heterogeneous population.
Centre for microdata methods and practice