Peter Vida () (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, IDEA)
Abstract
Two players can make use of a trusted third party who mediates and partially resolves their conflict. Usually, the mediator should be aware of the situation and give suggestions to the players accordingly. However, a corrupt mediator can have a big influence on the outcome of the game. We single out a transparent mediator which can be safely applied in any two player game without loss of efficiency. That is, the mediator is independent of the game and the desired outcome. Technically, we show that any correlated equilibrium of any two player game can be obtained as Nash equilibria of the game, extended with cheap, pre-play communication, where players can communicate through the proposed mediator. The key idea is that after the mediated communication the players can have a plain conversation. In particular, the mediating communication device is transparent, controllable and is the same for all games and for all equilibrium distributions. We extend the result to three player games and show that one of the players can play the role of the mediator. We implement the set of correlated equilibrium in Nash equilibria of an extended game where the players have a plain conversation. The central assumption is that players can be invited to eavesdrop a private conversation. We extend the analysis to games with incomplete information and to the set of communication equilibria.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute of Economics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences in its series IEHAS Discussion Papers with number
0511.
References listed on IDEAS 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.:
Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2003.
"Long Cheap Talk,"
Econometrica,
Econometric Society, vol. 71(6), pages 1619-1660, November.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Robert J. Aumann & Sergiu Hart, 2002.
"Long Cheap Talk,"
Discussion Paper Series
dp284, Center for Rationality and Interactive Decision Theory, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, revised Nov 2002.
[Downloadable!]
Aumann, Robert J. & Heifetz, Aviad, 2002.
"Incomplete information,"
Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,
in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 43, pages 1665-1686
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions:
Aumann, Robert J. & Heifetz, Aviad, 2001.
"Incomplete Information,"
Working Papers
1124, California Institute of Technology, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences.
[Downloadable!]
Ehud Lehrer & Sylvain Sorin, 1994.
"One-Shot Public Mediated Talk,"
Discussion Papers
1108, Northwestern University, Center for Mathematical Studies in Economics and Management Science.
[Downloadable!]