IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/fip/fedbwp/12-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Valuable cheap talk and equilibrium selection

Author

Listed:
  • Julian Jamison

Abstract

Intuitively, we expect that players who are allowed to engage in costless communication before playing a game would be foolish to agree on an inefficient equilibrium. At the same time, however, such preplay communication has been suggested as a rationale for expecting Nash equilibrium in general. This paper presents a plausible formal model of cheap talk that distinguishes and resolves these possibilities. Players are assumed to have an unlimited opportunity to send messages before playing an arbitrary game. Using an extension of fictitious play beliefs, minimal assumptions are made concerning which messages about future actions are credible and hence contribute to final beliefs. In this environment it is shown that meaningful communication among players leads to a Nash equilibrium (NE) of the action game. Within the set of NE, efficiency then turns out to be a consequence of imposing optimality on the cheap talk portion of the extended game. This finding contrasts with previous \"babbling\" results.

Suggested Citation

  • Julian Jamison, 2012. "Valuable cheap talk and equilibrium selection," Working Papers 12-3, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    • Handle: RePEc:fip:fedbwp:12-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2012/wp1203.htm
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://www.bostonfed.org/economic/wp/wp2012/wp1203.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Bergin James & MacLeod W. Bentley, 1993. "Efficiency and Renegotiation in Repeated Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 42-73, October.
    2. Kalai, Ehud & Lehrer, Ehud, 1993. "Rational Learning Leads to Nash Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(5), pages 1019-1045, September.
    3. Farrell Joseph, 1993. "Meaning and Credibility in Cheap-Talk Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 514-531, October.
    4. Crawford, Vincent P & Haller, Hans, 1990. "Learning How to Cooperate: Optimal Play in Repeated Coordination Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(3), pages 571-595, May.
    5. Farrell, Joseph & Gibbons, Robert, 1989. "Cheap talk can matter in bargaining," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 221-237, June.
    6. Joseph Farrell, 1987. "Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Entry," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 18(1), pages 34-39, Spring.
    7. Sandroni, Alvaro, 2000. "Reciprocity and Cooperation in Repeated Coordination Games: The Principled-Player Approach," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 157-182, August.
    8. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Julian Jamison, 2020. "Valuable Cheap Talk and Equilibrium Selection," Games, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-14, August.
    2. Sally, David, 2005. "Can I say "bobobo" and mean "There's no such thing as cheap talk"?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 57(3), pages 245-266, July.
    3. Joseph Farrell & Matthew Rabin, 1996. "Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 103-118, Summer.
    4. Andonie, Costel & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2012. "Pre-election polls as strategic coordination devices," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 84(2), pages 681-700.
    5. Olivier Gossner & Nicolas Melissas, 2006. "Informational Cascades Elicit Private Information ," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(1), pages 297-325, February.
    6. 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.
    7. Sander Onderstal & Yang Yang, 2020. "Cheap-talk Communication in Procurement Auctions: Theory and Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 20-013/VII, Tinbergen Institute.
    8. Austen-Smith, David & Banks, Jeffrey S., 2000. "Cheap Talk and Burned Money," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(1), pages 1-16, March.
    9. 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.
    10. Alfred Wagenhofer, 2000. "Disclosure of proprietary information in the course of an acquisition," Accounting and Business Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 57-69.
    11. Ricardo Alonso & Wouter Dessein & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "When Does Coordination Require Centralization?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 145-179, March.
    12. Adrian de Groot Ruiz & Theo Offerman & Sander Onderstal, 2011. "Equilibrium Selection in Cheap Talk Games: ACDC rocks when Other Criteria remain silent," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 11-037/1, Tinbergen Institute, revised 31 Oct 2011.
    13. Kristopher W. Ramsay, 2004. "Politics at the Water’s Edge," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 48(4), pages 459-486, August.
    14. Grant, Simon & Quiggin, John, 1998. "The meeting place problem: Salience and search," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 271-283, January.
    15. Andreas Blume & Douglas V. DeJong & George R. Neumann & N. E. Savin, 2002. "Learning and communication in sender-receiver games: an econometric investigation," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 17(3), pages 225-247.
    16. Vincent P. Crawford & Miguel A. Costa-Gomes & Nagore Iriberri, 2010. "Strategic Thinking," Levine's Working Paper Archive 661465000000001148, David K. Levine.
    17. Crawford, Vincent, 1998. "A Survey of Experiments on Communication via Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 286-298, February.
    18. Blume, Andreas & Noussair, Charles N. & Ye, Bohan, 2024. "Fragile meaning - an experiment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    19. 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.
    20. Heller, Yuval & Kuzmics, Christoph, 2024. "Communication, renegotiation and coordination with private values," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 143(C), pages 51-76.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Game theory; Stochastic analysis;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:fip:fedbwp:12-3. 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: Catherine Spozio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/frbbous.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.