IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cor/louvrp/2833.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Communication structure and coalition-proofness: experimental evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Gilles GRANDJEAN
  • Marco MANTOVANI
  • Ana MAULEON
  • Vincent VANNETELBOSCH

Abstract

The paper analyzes the role of the structure of communication—i.e. who is talking with whom—in a coordination game. We run an experiment in a three-player game with Pareto ranked equilibria, where a pair of players has a profitable joint deviation from the Pareto-superior equilibrium. We show that specific communication structures lead to different ‘coalition-proof’ equilibria in this game. Results match the theoretical predictions. Subjects communicate and play the Pareto-superior equilibrium when communication is public. When pairs of players exchange messages privately, subjects play the Pareto-inferior equilibrium. Even in these latter cases, however, players’ beliefs and choices tend to react to messages, despite the fact that these are not credible.
(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Suggested Citation

  • Gilles GRANDJEAN & Marco MANTOVANI & Ana MAULEON & Vincent VANNETELBOSCH, 2017. "Communication structure and coalition-proofness: experimental evidence," LIDAM Reprints CORE 2833, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    • Handle: RePEc:cor:louvrp:2833
    Note: In : European Economic Review, 94, 90-102, 2017
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Clark & Stephen Kay & Martin Sefton, 2001. "When are Nash equilibria self-enforcing? An experimental analysis," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 29(4), pages 495-515.
    2. Gary Charness & Martin Dufwenberg, 2011. "Participation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(4), pages 1211-1237, June.
    3. Bramoulle, Yann & Galeotti, Andrea & Rogers, Brian (ed.), 2016. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199948277.
    4. Rabin Matthew, 1994. "A Model of Pre-game Communication," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 370-391, August.
    5. Charness, Gary & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2003. "Promises & Partnership," Research Papers in Economics 2003:3, Stockholm University, Department of Economics.
    6. Andrew Schotter & Isabel Trevino, 2014. "Belief Elicitation in the Laboratory," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 103-128, August.
    7. Moreno, Diego & Wooders, John, 1996. "Coalition-Proof Equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 80-112, November.
    8. Charness, Gary, 2000. "Self-Serving Cheap Talk: A Test Of Aumann's Conjecture," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 177-194, November.
    9. Blume Andreas & Kim Yong-Gwan & Sobel Joel, 1993. "Evolutionary Stability in Games of Communication," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 547-575, October.
    10. repec:hoo:wpaper:e-89-7 is not listed on IDEAS
    11. Sanjiv Erat & Uri Gneezy, 2012. "White Lies," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(4), pages 723-733, April.
    12. Yann Bramoullé & Andrea Galeotti & Brian Rogers, 2016. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks," Post-Print hal-01447842, HAL.
    13. Farrell, Joseph & Gibbons, Robert, 1989. "Cheap Talk with Two Audiences," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 79(5), pages 1214-1223, December.
    14. Russell Cooper & Douglas V. DeJong & Robert Forsythe & Thomas W. Ross, 1992. "Communication in Coordination Games," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 739-771.
    15. Battaglini, Marco & Makarov, Uliana, 2014. "Cheap talk with multiple audiences: An experimental analysis," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 147-164.
    16. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde & Jürgen Schupp & Gert G. Wagner, 2011. "Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 522-550, June.
    17. Andersson, Ola & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 207-219.
    18. Moreno, Diego & Wooders, John, 1998. "An Experimental Study of Communication and Coordination in Noncooperative Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 24(1-2), pages 47-76, July.
    19. Farrell, Joseph, 1988. "Communication, coordination and Nash equilibrium," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 209-214.
    20. Crawford, Vincent, 1998. "A Survey of Experiments on Communication via Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 286-298, February.
    21. Syngjoo Choi & Jihong Lee, 2014. "Communication, Coordination, And Networks," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 12(1), pages 223-247, February.
    22. Gary Charness & Martin Dufwenberg, 2006. "Promises and Partnership," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1579-1601, November.
    23. Yann Bramoullé & Andrea Galeotti & Brian Rogers, 2016. "The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Networks," Post-Print hal-03572533, HAL.
    24. Attila Ambrus, 2006. "Coalitional Rationalizability," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 903-929.
    25. Christoph Vanberg, 2008. "Why Do People Keep Their Promises? An Experimental Test of Two Explanations -super-1," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(6), pages 1467-1480, November.
    26. Urs Fischbacher, 2007. "z-Tree: Zurich toolbox for ready-made economic experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(2), pages 171-178, June.
    27. Joseph Farrell & Matthew Rabin, 1996. "Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(3), pages 103-118, Summer.
    28. Ray, Indrajit, 1996. "Coalition-Proof Correlated Equilibrium: A Definition," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 56-79, November.
    29. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1996. "Coalition-Proofness and Correlation with Arbitrary Communication Possibilities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 17(1), pages 113-128, November.
    30. Charness, Gary & Dufwenberg, Martin, 2010. "Bare promises: An experiment," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 281-283, May.
    31. Russell Cooper & Douglas V. DeJong & Robert Forsythe & Thomas W. Ross, 1989. "Communication in the Battle of the Sexes Game: Some Experimental Results," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 20(4), pages 568-587, Winter.
    32. Ambrus, Attila, 2006. "Coalitional Rationalizability," Scholarly Articles 3200266, Harvard University Department of Economics.
    33. COOPER, R. & DEJONG, D.V. & FORSYTHE, R. & Tom Ross, 1989. "Communication In The Battle Of The Sexes Game," Carleton Industrial Organization Research Unit (CIORU) 89-03, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    34. Blume, Andreas & Ortmann, Andreas, 2007. "The effects of costless pre-play communication: Experimental evidence from games with Pareto-ranked equilibria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 132(1), pages 274-290, January.
    35. Farrell, Joseph, 1995. "Talk Is Cheap," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(2), pages 186-190, May.
    36. Bernheim, B. Douglas & Peleg, Bezalel & Whinston, Michael D., 1987. "Coalition-Proof Nash Equilibria I. Concepts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 1-12, June.
    37. Crawford, Vincent P & Sobel, Joel, 1982. "Strategic Information Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1431-1451, November.
    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. Timothy Flannery & Siyu Wang, 2023. "Is the “smoke‐filled room” necessary? An experimental study of the effect of communication networks on collusion," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(4), pages 1056-1077, April.

    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. GRANDJEAN, Gilles & MANTOVANI, Marco & MAULEON, Ana & VANNETELBOSCH, Vincent, 2014. "Whom are you talking with ? An experiment on credibility and communication structure," LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE 2014042, Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE).
    2. Francisca Jiménez-Jiménez & Javier Rodero Cosano, 2021. "Experimental cheap talk games: strategic complementarity and coordination," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 91(2), pages 235-263, September.
    3. He, Simin & Offerman, Theo & van de Ven, Jeroen, 2019. "The power and limits of sequential communication in coordination games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 238-273.
    4. Wang, Siyu & Houser, Daniel, 2019. "Demanding or deferring? An experimental analysis of the economic value of communication with attitude," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 381-395.
    5. Feltovich, Nick & Grossman, Philip J., 2015. "How does the effect of pre-play suggestions vary with group size? Experimental evidence from a threshold public-good game," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 263-280.
    6. Stefano Demichelis & Jorgen W. Weibull, 2008. "Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1292-1311, September.
    7. Ro’i Zultan, 2013. "Timing of messages and the Aumann conjecture: a multiple-selves approach," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(4), pages 789-800, November.
    8. Dugar, Subhasish & Shahriar, Quazi, 2018. "Restricted and free-form cheap-talk and the scope for efficient coordination," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 109(C), pages 294-310.
    9. Tjaša Bjedov & Thierry Madiès & Marie Claire Villeval, 2016. "Communication And Coordination In A Two-Stage Game," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(3), pages 1519-1540, July.
    10. Siyu Wang & Timothy Flannery, 2021. "Intention or Request: The Impact of Message Structures," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(1), pages 1-13, February.
    11. Hu, Youxin & Kagel, John & Yang, Huanxing & Zhang, Lan, 2020. "The effects of pre-play communication in a coordination game with incomplete information," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 403-415.
    12. Nicolas Jacquemet & Stéphane Luchini & Jason F. Shogren & Adam Zylbersztejn, 2018. "Coordination with communication under oath," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 21(3), pages 627-649, September.
    13. Andersson, Ola & Wengström, Erik, 2012. "Credible communication and cooperation: Experimental evidence from multi-stage Games," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(1), pages 207-219.
    14. Fortuna Casoria & Arno Riedl & Peter Werner, 2020. "Behavioral Aspects of Communication in Organizations," Post-Print halshs-03024050, HAL.
    15. Edoardo Grillo, 2013. "Reference Dependence, Risky Projects and Credible Information Transmission," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 331, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    16. Gary Charness & Francesco Feri & Miguel A. Meléndez-Jiménez & Matthias Sutter, 2023. "An Experimental Study on the Effects of Communication, Credibility, and Clustering in Network Games," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 105(6), pages 1530-1543, November.
    17. Miettinen, Topi, 2013. "Promises and conventions – An approach to pre-play agreements," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 68-84.
    18. Koukoumelis, Anastasios & Levati, M. Vittoria & Weisser, Johannes, 2012. "Leading by words: A voluntary contribution experiment with one-way communication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 379-390.
    19. Crawford, Vincent, 1998. "A Survey of Experiments on Communication via Cheap Talk," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 78(2), pages 286-298, February.
    20. Siegenthaler, Simon, 2017. "Meet the lemons: An experiment on how cheap-talk overcomes adverse selection in decentralized markets," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 147-161.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C91 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Laboratory, Individual Behavior
    • D03 - Microeconomics - - General - - - Behavioral Microeconomics: Underlying Principles
    • 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:cor:louvrp:2833. 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: Alain GILLIS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/coreebe.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.