“I'm just a soul whose intentions are good”: the role of communication in noisy repeated games
Name
Fudenberg_I'm just a soul.pdf
Description
Accepted version
Size
1.4 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
89591a1ba865774265f627bd3a176048
Author(s)
Arechar, Antonio A.
Dreber, Anna
Fudenberg, Drew
Date Issued
July 2017
Journal
Games and economic behavior
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Citation
Arechar, Antonio A., Anna Dreber, and DrewFudenberg, "'I'm just a soul whose intentions are good': the role of communication in noisy repeated games." Games and economic behavior 104 (2017): p. 726-743 doi 10.1016/J.GEB.2017.06.013 ©2017 Author(s)
Version
Author's final manuscript
Abstract
We let participants indicate their intended action in a repeated game experiment where actions are implemented with errors. Even though communication is cheap talk, we find that the majority of messages were honest (although the majority of participants lied at least occasionally). As a result, communication has a positive effect on cooperation when the payoff matrix makes the returns to cooperation high; when the payoff matrix gives a lower return to cooperation, communication reduces overall cooperation. These results suggest that cheap talk communication can promote cooperation in repeated games, but only when there is already a self-interested motivation to cooperate. ©2017
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Economics
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1016/J.GEB.2017.06.013
