IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jeborg/v195y2022icp257-271.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The art of brevity

Author

Listed:
  • Alonso, Ricardo
  • Rantakari, Heikki

Abstract

We analyze a class of sender-receiver games with quadratic payoffs, which includes the communication games in Alonso et al. (2008) and Rantakari (2008) as special cases, for which the sender’s or the receiver’s maximum expected payoff when players have access to arbitrary, mediated communication protocols is attained in one round of face-to-face, unmediated cheap talk. This result is based on the existence for these games of a communication equilibrium with an infinite number of partitions of the state space. We provide explicit expressions for the maximum expected payoff of the sender and the receiver, and illustrate its use by deriving new comparative statics of the quality of optimal communication. For instance, a shift in the underlying uncertainty that reduces expected conflict can worsen the quality of communication.

Suggested Citation

  • Alonso, Ricardo & Rantakari, Heikki, 2022. "The art of brevity," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 195(C), pages 257-271.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:jeborg:v:195:y:2022:i:c:p:257-271
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2022.01.014
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268122000208
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.01.014?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. repec:dau:papers:123456789/8159 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. , & ,, 2013. "Implementation of communication equilibria by correlated cheap talk: The two-player case," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), January.
    3. , & , J. & ,, 2007. "Noisy talk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(4), December.
    4. Myerson, Roger B., 1982. "Optimal coordination mechanisms in generalized principal-agent problems," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(1), pages 67-81, June.
    5. Forges, Francoise M, 1986. "An Approach to Communication Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(6), pages 1375-1385, November.
    6. Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2003. "Long Cheap Talk," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1619-1660, November.
      • Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2002. "Long Cheap Talk," Discussion Paper Series dp284, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, revised Nov 2002.
    7. Paul Milgrom & Ilya Segal, 2002. "Envelope Theorems for Arbitrary Choice Sets," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(2), pages 583-601, March.
    8. Heikki Rantakari, 2008. "Governing Adaptation -super-1," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 75(4), pages 1257-1285.
    9. Goltsman, Maria & Hörner, Johannes & Pavlov, Gregory & Squintani, Francesco, 2009. "Mediation, arbitration and negotiation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1397-1420, July.
    10. Gerardi, Dino, 2004. "Unmediated communication in games with complete and incomplete information," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 104-131, January.
    11. Jeremy C. Stein, 2002. "Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized versus Hierarchical Firms," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(5), pages 1891-1921, October.
    12. 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.
    13. Stein, Jeremy C, 1989. "Cheap Talk and the Fed: A Theory of Imprecise Policy Announcements," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(1), pages 32-42, March.
    14. Krishna, Vijay & Morgan, John, 2004. "The art of conversation: eliciting information from experts through multi-stage communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 147-179, August.
    15. Ricardo Alonso & Wouter Dessein & Niko Matouschek, 2008. "When Does Coordination Require Centralization? Corrigendum," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1195-1196, June.
    16. Heikki Rantakari, 2016. "Soliciting Advice: Active versus Passive Principals," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 32(4), pages 719-761.
    17. Ricardo Alonso & Wouter Dessein & Niko Matouschek, 2015. "Organizing to Adapt and Compete," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(2), pages 158-187, May.
    18. Ivanov, Maxim, 2010. "Communication via a strategic mediator," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(2), pages 869-884, March.
    19. Nahum D. Melumad & Toshiyuki Shibano, 1991. "Communication in Settings with No. Transfers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(2), pages 173-198, Summer.
    20. Ivanov, Maxim, 2014. "Beneficial mediated communication in cheap talk," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 129-135.
    21. Blume, Andreas, 2012. "A class of strategy-correlated equilibria in sender–receiver games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 510-517.
    22. , & , M. & ,, 2013. "Hierarchical cheap talk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), January.
    23. Chirantan Ganguly & Indrajit Ray, 2009. "Simple Mediation in a Cheap-Talk Game," Discussion Papers 05-08r, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    24. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    25. FORGES, Françoise, 1985. "Correlated equilibria in a class of repeated games with incomplete information," LIDAM Reprints CORE 663, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    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. Rantakari, Heikki, 2014. "A simple model of project selection with strategic communication and uncertain motives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 14-42.

    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. Migrow, Dimitri, 2021. "Designing communication hierarchies," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    2. Dmitry Sedov, 2023. "Almost-truthful interim-biased mediation enables information exchange between agents with misaligned interests," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(3), pages 505-546, September.
    3. Blume, Andreas, 2012. "A class of strategy-correlated equilibria in sender–receiver games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 510-517.
    4. Goltsman, Maria & Hörner, Johannes & Pavlov, Gregory & Squintani, Francesco, 2009. "Mediation, arbitration and negotiation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(4), pages 1397-1420, July.
    5. Zhuozheng Li & Huanxing Yang & Lan Zhang, 2019. "Pre-communication in a coordination game with incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(1), pages 109-141, March.
    6. Kolotilin, Anton & Li, Hao & Li, Wei, 2013. "Optimal limited authority for principal," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 148(6), pages 2344-2382.
    7. Goltsman, Maria & Pavlov, Gregory, 2011. "How to talk to multiple audiences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 100-122, May.
    8. Chirantan Ganguly & Indrajit Ray, 2023. "Simple Mediation in a Cheap-Talk Game," Games, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-14, June.
    9. Li, Zhuozheng & Rantakari, Heikki & Yang, Huanxing, 2016. "Competitive cheap talk," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 96(C), pages 65-89.
    10. Koessler, Frédéric & Martimort, David, 2012. "Optimal delegation with multi-dimensional decisions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 147(5), pages 1850-1881.
    11. Chirantan Ganguly & Indrajit Ray, 2009. "Simple Mediation in a Cheap-Talk Game," Discussion Papers 05-08r, Department of Economics, University of Birmingham.
    12. Blume, Andreas & Lai, Ernest K. & Lim, Wooyoung, 2023. "Mediated talk: An experiment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    13. Inga Deimen & Dezső Szalay, 2019. "Delegated Expertise, Authority, and Communication," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(4), pages 1349-1374, April.
    14. Irene Valsecchi, 2013. "The expert problem: a survey," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 14(4), pages 303-331, November.
    15. repec:dau:papers:123456789/5279 is not listed on IDEAS
    16. Rivera, Thomas J., 2018. "Incentives and the structure of communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 201-247.
    17. Rantakari, Heikki, 2014. "A simple model of project selection with strategic communication and uncertain motives," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 14-42.
    18. Hagenbach, Jeanne & Koessler, Frédéric, 2016. "Full disclosure in decentralized organizations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 5-7.
    19. , & ,, 2013. "Implementation of communication equilibria by correlated cheap talk: The two-player case," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 8(1), January.
    20. 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.
    21. Forges, Francoise & Koessler, Frederic, 2005. "Communication equilibria with partially verifiable types," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 41(7), pages 793-811, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Communication equilibrium; Information transmission; Mediation; One-shot cheap talk;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:eee:jeborg:v:195:y:2022:i:c:p:257-271. 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 Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jebo .

    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.