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Image Building

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Author Info
B. Curtis Eaton
William D. White

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Abstract

We humans engage in a lot of costuming that can often be interpreted as type communication. Uniforms are the obvious example (cops on the beat, for example, wear uniforms because they want us to know that they are cops), but there are many other examples. This paper models costuming, or image building, as type communication. At the heart of the analysis is a model of social interaction in which information concerning the type of the people with whom we interact is mutually valuable - that is, valuable to them and to us. We first examine the equilibria of an image building game in which players choose their costumes and then engage in a series of social interactions in which their costumes might serve as type signals. Obviously, there are as many perfect signaling equilibria as there are ways to assign costumes to player types, so the image building game has a very nasty coordination problem. We look at two ways in which this problem might be solved. First we look for salient, history dependent costume replacement strategies in a dynamic image building game with imperfectly durable costumes. Then we examine the possibility that the firms who make and sell costumes can solve the coordination problem through image advertising. Image advertising as we conceive of it has a number of interesting features that distinguish it from other forms of advertising.

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Paper provided by Department of Economics, University of Calgary in its series Working Papers with number 2008-30.

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Date of creation: 28 Jan 2008
Date of revision: 28 Jan 2008
Handle: RePEc:clg:wpaper:2008-30

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Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
  1. Kihlstrom, Richard E & Riordan, Michael H, 1984. "Advertising as a Signal," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(3), pages 427-50, June. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  2. Arifovic, Jasmina & Eaton, Curtis, 1995. "Coordination via Genetic Learning," Computational Economics, Springer, vol. 8(3), pages 181-203, August.
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  3. repec:fth:simfra:92-17 is not listed on IDEAS
  4. Klein, Benjamin & Leffler, Keith B, 1981. "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual Performance," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(4), pages 615-41, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  5. Eaton, C. & White, W.D., 1992. "Image Building," Discussion Papers dp92-17, Department of Economics, Simon Fraser University.
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    • B. Curtis Eaton & William D. White, 2008. "Image Building," Working Papers 2008-30, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 28 Jan 2008. [Downloadable!]
  6. Nelson, Philip, 1974. "Advertising as Information," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(4), pages 729-54, July/Aug.. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  7. Arifovic, Jasmina & Eaton, B. Curtis, 1998. "The evolution of type communication in a sender/receiver game of common interest with cheap talk," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 22(8-9), pages 1187-1207, August. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  1. B. Curtis Eaton & William D. White, 2008. "Image Building," Working Papers 2008-30, Department of Economics, University of Calgary, revised 28 Jan 2008. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  2. Clemens, Christiane & Riechmann, Thomas, 1996. "Evolutionäre Optimierungsverfahren und ihr Einsatz in der ökonomischen Forschung," Diskussionspapiere der Wirtschaftswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität Hannover dp-195, Universität Hannover, Wirtschaftswissenschaftliche Fakultät. [Downloadable!]
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