IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pit/wpaper/488.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Costly Communication in Groups: Theory and an Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Alistair Wilson

Abstract

I develop a novel model of group-based deliberation in which communication is costly in two directions: agents must pay separate costs to send and to receive messages. Equilibrium strategies have an intuitive characterization - those with the best information send, those with the worst information receive. But free-riding leads to less information exchange than is optimal. Testing the model's predictions with an experiment I find that subjects overcommunicate when costs are high, but fail to benefit from this as much as they should. In welfare terms the experiment finds that listening costs are more harmful to welfare, in contrast with theory, which indicates sending costs. The experiment also suggests that the existence of costly communication channels can reduce total welfare.

Suggested Citation

  • Alistair Wilson, 2011. "Costly Communication in Groups: Theory and an Experiment," Working Paper 488, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Jul 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:488
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.pitt.edu/~alistair/CostlyCommunication.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Feddersen, Timothy & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 1998. "Convicting the Innocent: The Inferiority of Unanimous Jury Verdicts under Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 92(1), pages 23-35, March.
    2. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Welch, Ivo, 1992. "A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change in Informational Cascades," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(5), pages 992-1026, October.
    3. Coughlan, Peter J., 2000. "In Defense of Unanimous Jury Verdicts: Mistrials, Communication, and Strategic Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 94(2), pages 375-393, June.
    4. Olszewski, Wojciech, 2004. "Informal communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 180-200, August.
    5. Ying Chen & Navin Kartik & Joel Sobel, 2008. "Selecting Cheap-Talk Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(1), pages 117-136, January.
    6. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    7. Jordi Brandts & Gary Charness, 2000. "Hot vs. Cold: Sequential Responses and Preference Stability in Experimental Games," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(3), pages 227-238, March.
    8. Joseph Tao-yi Wang & Michael Spezio & Colin F. Camerer, 2010. "Pinocchio's Pupil: Using Eyetracking and Pupil Dilation to Understand Truth Telling and Deception in Sender-Receiver Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 984-1007, June.
    9. Cai, Hongbin & Wang, Joseph Tao-Yi, 2006. "Overcommunication in strategic information transmission games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 7-36, July.
    10. Blume, Andreas, et al, 1998. "Experimental Evidence on the Evolution of Meaning of Messages in Sender-Receiver Games," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(5), pages 1323-1340, December.
    11. Glazer, Jacob & Rubinstein, Ariel, 1998. "Motives and Implementation: On the Design of Mechanisms to Elicit Opinions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 79(2), pages 157-173, April.
    12. Jeffrey S. Rosenthal & Martin J. Osborne & Matthew A. Turner, 2000. "Meetings with Costly Participation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 927-943, September.
    13. Abhijit V. Banerjee, 1992. "A Simple Model of Herd Behavior," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(3), pages 797-817.
    14. Yaw Nyarko & Andrew Schotter, 2002. "An Experimental Study of Belief Learning Using Elicited Beliefs," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(3), pages 971-1005, May.
    15. David Austen-Smith & Timothy Feddersen, 2005. "Deliberation and Voting Rules," Studies in Choice and Welfare, in: David Austen-Smith & John Duggan (ed.), Social Choice and Strategic Decisions, pages 269-316, Springer.
    16. Abhijit Banerjee & Rohini Somanathan, 2001. "A Simple Model of Voice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 189-227.
    17. Doraszelski Ulrich & Gerardi Dino & Squintani Francesco, 2003. "Communication and Voting with Double-Sided Information," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 3(1), pages 1-41, August.
    18. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    19. Smorodinsky, Rann & Tennenholtz, Moshe, 2006. "Overcoming free riding in multi-party computations--The anonymous case," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 55(2), pages 385-406, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Dietrichson, Jens & Jochem, Torsten, 2014. "Organizational coordination and costly communication with boundedly rational agents," Comparative Institutional Analysis Working Paper Series 2014:1, Lund University, Comparative Institutional Analysis, School of Economics and Management.
    2. Dietrichson, Jens & Gudmundsson, Jens & Jochem, Torsten, 2014. "Let's Talk It Over: Communication and Coordination in Teams," Working Papers 2014:2, Lund University, Department of Economics, revised 18 Apr 2018.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alistair Wilson, 2012. "Costly Communication in Groups: Theory and an Experiment," Working Paper 499, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Feb 2014.
    2. Adrian Groot Ruiz & Theo Offerman & Sander Onderstal, 2014. "For those about to talk we salute you: an experimental study of credible deviations and ACDC," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 17(2), pages 173-199, June.
    3. Minozzi, William & Woon, Jonathan, 2019. "The limited value of a second opinion: Competition and exaggeration in experimental cheap talk games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 144-162.
    4. Sebastian Fehrler & Moritz Janas, 2021. "Delegation to a Group," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3714-3743, June.
    5. Fehrler, Sebastian & Janas, Moritz, 2021. "Delegation to a Group," IZA Discussion Papers 14426, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Quement, Mark T. Le & Marcin, Isabel, 2020. "Communication and voting in heterogeneous committees: An experimental study," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 449-468.
    7. Florian Ederer & Ernst Fehr, 2007. "Deception and Incentives. How Dishonesty Undermines Effort Provision," IEW - Working Papers 341, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    8. de Groot Ruiz, Adrian & Offerman, Theo & Onderstal, Sander, 2015. "Equilibrium selection in experimental cheap talk games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 14-25.
    9. Fehrler, Sebastian & Hughes, Niall, 2014. "How Transparency Kills Information Aggregation (And Why That May Be A Good Thing)," VfS Annual Conference 2014 (Hamburg): Evidence-based Economic Policy 100440, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    10. Alexander Lundberg, 2020. "The importance of expertise in group decisions," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 55(3), pages 495-521, October.
    11. Cabrales, Antonio & Feri, Francesco & Gottardi, Piero & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2020. "Can there be a market for cheap-talk information? An experimental investigation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 368-381.
    12. Rong, Rong & Houser, Daniel & Dai, Anovia Yifan, 2016. "Money or friends: Social identity and deception in networks," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 56-66.
    13. Wonsuk Chung & Rick Harbaugh, 2012. "Biased Recommendations," Working Papers 2012-02, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business, Department of Business Economics and Public Policy.
    14. Kawamura, Kohei & Vlaseros, Vasileios, 2017. "Expert information and majority decisions," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 77-88.
    15. Battaglini, Marco & Makarov, Uliana, 2014. "Cheap talk with multiple audiences: An experimental analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 147-164.
    16. Peeters, Ronald & Vorsatz, Marc & Walzl, Markus, 2015. "Beliefs and truth-telling: A laboratory experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 1-12.
    17. Cabrales, Antonio & Feri, Francesco & Gottardi, Piero & Meléndez-Jiménez, Miguel A., 2021. "Communication and social preferences: an experimental analysis," CEPR Discussion Papers 15711, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    18. Serra Garcia, M. & van Damme, E.E.C. & Potters, J.J.M., 2010. "Which Words Bond? An Experiment on Signaling in a Public Good Game (replaced by CentER DP 2011-139)," Discussion Paper 2010-33, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    19. Jacob K. Goeree & Leeat Yariv, 2009. "An experimental study of jury deliberation," IEW - Working Papers 438, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    20. Siegenthaler, Simon, 2017. "Meet the lemons: An experiment on how cheap-talk overcomes adverse selection in decentralized markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 147-161.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C92 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Group Behavior
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:488. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/depghus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.