Experimental Implementations and Robustness of Fully Revealing Equilibria in Multidimensional Cheap Talk

Abstract

Experimental Implementations and Robustness of Fully Revealing Equilibria in Multidimensional Cheap Talk Professor Joseph Tao-yi Wang（王道一 教授） 國立臺灣大學經濟系 ? We design experiments that capture the essence of the theoretical environments studied in multidimensional cheap talk. Two senders transmit information to a receiver over a?? state space. Interests are overall misaligned, but common interests exist between each sender and the receiver along different dimensional components of the state, which are exploited in equilibrium for full revelation. Observed frequencies of receivers identifying the state are significantly higher in two-sender games than in the control game with one sender, in a manner consistent with the respective fully and partially revealing equilibria. By manipulating message/state space to control for out-of-equilibrium beliefs, we investigate the robustness of the fully revealing equilibrium and observe significantly lower adherence when the equilibrium requires support of “implausible beliefs.” Introducing a fraction of honest senders to the equilibrium model rationalizes our findings.