IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/pit/wpaper/365.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Intentional Vagueness

Author

Listed:
  • Oliver Board
  • Andreas Blume

Abstract

This paper analyzes communication with a language that is vague in the sense that identical messages do not always result in identical interpretations. It is shown that strategic agents frequently add to this vagueness by being intentionally vague, i.e. they deliberately choose less precise messages than they have to among the ones available to them in equilibrium. Having to communicate with a vague language can be welfare enhancing because it mitigates conflict. In equilibria that satisfy a dynamic stability condition intentional vagueness increases with the degree of conflict between sender and receiver.

Suggested Citation

  • Oliver Board & Andreas Blume, 2008. "Intentional Vagueness," Working Paper 365, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised Aug 2008.
    • Handle: RePEc:pit:wpaper:365
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.pitt.edu/~ojboard/papers/vagueness.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Basu, Kaushik & Weibull, Jorgen W., 1991. "Strategy subsets closed under rational behavior," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 141-146, June.
    2. , & , J. & ,, 2007. "Noisy talk," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(4), December.
    3. Dewan, Torun & Myatt, David P., 2008. "The Qualities of Leadership: Direction, Communication, and Obfuscation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 102(3), pages 351-368, August.
    4. Petra M. Geraats, 2007. "The Mystique of Central Bank Speak," International Journal of Central Banking, International Journal of Central Banking, vol. 3(1), pages 37-80, March.
    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. Hernández, Penélope & Urbano, Amparo & Vila, José E., 2012. "Pragmatic languages with universal grammars," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 738-752.
    2. Johanna Hertel & John Smith, 2013. "Not so cheap talk: costly and discrete communication," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(2), pages 267-291, August.
    3. Hakenes, Hendrik & Schnabel, Isabel, 2013. "Regulatory Capture by Sophistication," VfS Annual Conference 2013 (Duesseldorf): Competition Policy and Regulation in a Global Economic Order 79991, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    4. Halpern, Joseph Y. & Kets, Willemien, 2015. "Ambiguous language and common priors," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 171-180.
    5. K.J.M. De Jaegher & R. van Rooij, 2011. "Game-theoretic pragmatics under conflicting and common interests," Working Papers 11-25, Utrecht School of Economics.

    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. Andreas Blume & Oliver Board, 2009. "Intentional Vagueness," Working Paper 381, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh, revised May 2009.
    2. Goodall, Amanda H., 2009. "Highly cited leaders and the performance of research universities," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(7), pages 1079-1092, September.
    3. Dutta, Rohan & Levine, David Knudsen & Modica, Salvatore, 2018. "Collusion constrained equilibrium," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), January.
    4. Van Damme, Eric, 2002. "Strategic equilibrium," 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 41, pages 1521-1596, Elsevier.
    5. Ambrus, Attila, 2006. "Coalitional Rationalizability," Scholarly Articles 3200266, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    6. Jun Honda, 2015. "Games with the Total Bandwagon Property," Department of Economics Working Papers wuwp197, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Department of Economics.
    7. Roger Guesnerie & Pedro Jara-Moroni, 2007. "Expectational coordination in a class of economic models: Strategic substitutabilities versus strategic complementarities," PSE Working Papers halshs-00587837, HAL.
    8. Lai, Ernest K., 2014. "Expert advice for amateurs," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-16.
    9. Van Damme, Eric, 1994. "Evolutionary game theory," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(3-4), pages 847-858, April.
    10. Kawamura, Kohei, 2008. "Communication for Public Goods," SIRE Discussion Papers 2008-25, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    11. Golosov, Mikhail & Skreta, Vasiliki & Tsyvinski, Aleh & Wilson, Andrea, 2014. "Dynamic strategic information transmission," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 151(C), pages 304-341.
    12. Gilles Grandjean & Ana Mauleon & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2017. "Strongly rational sets for normal-form games," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 5(1), pages 35-46, April.
    13. Sánchez, Marcelo, 2009. "Monetary Union of Small Open Economies: The Role of Trasparency Misperceptions," Economia Internazionale / International Economics, Camera di Commercio Industria Artigianato Agricoltura di Genova, vol. 62(4), pages 469-504.
    14. Asheim, Geir B. & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Admissibility and common belief," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 208-234, February.
    15. J. Atsu Amegashie, 2009. "American Idol: should it be a singing contest or a popularity contest?," Journal of Cultural Economics, Springer;The Association for Cultural Economics International, vol. 33(4), pages 265-277, November.
    16. Johanna Hertel & John Smith, 2013. "Not so cheap talk: costly and discrete communication," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 75(2), pages 267-291, August.
    17. Jara-Moroni, Pedro, 2012. "Rationalizability in games with a continuum of players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 668-684.
    18. Shapiro, Dmitry & Shi, Xianwen & Zillante, Artie, 2014. "Level-k reasoning in a generalized beauty contest," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 308-329.
    19. Sobel, Joel, 2017. "A note on pre-play communication," University of California at San Diego, Economics Working Paper Series qt68d1t1xg, Department of Economics, UC San Diego.
    20. Shadmehr, Mehdi & Bernhardt, Dan, 2011. "Collective Action with Uncertain Payoffs: Coordination, Public Signals, and Punishment Dilemmas," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(4), pages 829-851, November.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    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:pit:wpaper:365. 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: Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/depghus.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.