Title

An Evolutionary Analysis of Pre-Play Communication and Efficiency in Games

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of pre-play communication on equilibrium selection in 2×2 symmetric coordination games. The players repeatedly play a coordination game preceded by an opportunity to exchange payoff irrelevant messages and gradually adjust their behavior. In short run, the players' access to the actions of the coordination game may be restricted. While the players can revise the set of accessible actions only occasionally, they frequently adjust their behavior in the cheap-talk game, taking the set of currently available actions as given. We obtain an efficient-equilibrium-selection result if the under-lying coordination game satisfies the self-signalling condition. On the other hand, if the game is not self-signalling, both the efficient and the inefficient equilibrium outcomes are stable.


Key Words: coordination games; communication; evolution; efficiency; cheap talk.

JEL Classification Number: C72

Kenichi AMAYA
Research Institute for Economics and Business Administration
Kobe University
Rokkodai-cho, Nada-ku, Kobe
657-8501 Japan
Phone: (81) 78 803 7036
Fax: (81) 78 803 7059