Multidimensional Cheap Talk
نویسندگان
چکیده
In this paper we extend the cheap talk model of Crawford and Sobel (1982) to a multidimensional state space and policy space. We provide a characterization of equilibria. We focus on the question of feasibility of information transmission, for large degrees of conflict of interests between the sender and the receiver. We show that it is possible to construct equilibria with information transmission even for unboundedly large conflicts, but that any such equilibrium is based on knife-edge assumptions. We prove that influential equilibria are non-generic when the conflict between the sender and the receiver is large enough. Thus, adding more dimensions cannot improve upon information revelation when interests are too divergent.
منابع مشابه
On the limits of communication in multidimensional cheap talk: A comment
We analyze a cheap talk game, a-la Crawford and Sobel (1982), in a multidimensional state and policy space. A feature of the multidimensional state space is that communication on one dimension often reveals information on others. We show how this feature imposes bounds on communication.
متن کاملOrdinal cheap talk∗
Can comparative statements be credible even when absolute statements are not? For instance, can a professor credibly rank different students for a prospective employer even if she has an incentive to exaggerate the merits of each student? Or can an analyst credibly rank different stocks even if the client would be dubious about a recommendation to buy any one of them? We examine such problems i...
متن کاملPersuasion by Cheap Talk
We consider the credibility, persuasiveness, and informativeness of multidimensional cheap talk by an expert to a decision maker. We find that an expert with state-independent preferences can always make credible comparative statements that trade off the expert’s incentive to exaggerate on each dimension. Such communication benefits the expert – cheap talk is “persuasive” – if her preferences a...
متن کاملThe (non-)robustness of influential cheap talk equilibria
Chakraborty and Harbaugh (2010) prove the existence of influential cheap talk equilibria in one sender one receiver games when the state is multidimensional and the preferences of the sender are state-independent. We show that only the babbling equilibrium survives the introduction of any small degree of uncertainty about the sender’s preferences in the spirit of Harsanyi (1973). None of the in...
متن کاملComparative cheap talk
When are comparative statements credible? We show that simple complementarity conditions ensure that an expert with private information about multiple issues can credibly rank the issues for a decision maker. By restricting the expert’s ability to exaggerate, multidimensional cheap talk of this form permits communicationwhen it would not be credible in a single dimension. The communication gain...
متن کامل