# Competitive Information Design for Pandora's Box

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.03769 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2103.03769/

## Key facts

- Cited by 5 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 5 Mar 2021.

## Built on by (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Multi-Sender Persuasion: A Computational Perspective](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.04971/) (2024)
- [Approximating Pandora's Box with Correlations](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.12976/) (2021)
- [Teaching Transformers to Solve Combinatorial Problems through Efficient Trial & Error](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2509.22023/) (2025)
- [Goal Recognition Design for General Behavioral Agents using Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2404.03054/) (2024)
- [Algorithmic Collusion and the Complexity of Information-Value-Free Equilibria](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2609.22757/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We study a natural competitive-information-design strategic variant for the celebrated Pandora's Box problem (Weitzman, 1979), where each box is associated with a strategic information sender who can design what information about the box's prize value to be revealed to the agent when the agent inspects the box. This variant with strategic boxes is motivated by a wide range of real-world economic applications for Pandora's Box. Our contributions are three-fold: (1) given the boxes' information policies, we characterize the agent's optimal search and stopping strategy; (2) we fully characterize the pure symmetric equilibrium for the game of boxes' competitive information revelation in a symmetric environment; and (3) we reveal various insights regarding information competition and the resultant agent payoff at equilibrium, and additionally, we study informational properties of Pandora's Box by establishing an intrinsic connection between informativeness of any box's value distribution and the utility order of the search agent.