TY - JOUR

T1 - Strategic information transmission with verifiable messages

AU - Seidmann, D.J.

AU - Winter, E.

PY - 1997

Y1 - 1997

N2 - IF THE SENDER'S PREFERENCES are monotonic in the Receiver's action, then it is known that the Sender reveals its type in every sequential equilibrium of a Sender-Receiver game with verifiable messages (see, e.g., Milgrom (1981)). Monotonicity is a natural condition in social situations such as buyer-seller relationships; but there are obviously other situations in which the ideal action for a Sender varies with its type. Accordingly, we generalize Milgrom's result by replacing monotonicity with more general conditions on the Sender's preferences, which are sufficient for existence and uniqueness of a fully revealing equilibrium in verifiable message games. These conditions include all games in which preferences satisfy the conditions which Crawford-Sobel (1982) imposed on cheap talk games.

AB - IF THE SENDER'S PREFERENCES are monotonic in the Receiver's action, then it is known that the Sender reveals its type in every sequential equilibrium of a Sender-Receiver game with verifiable messages (see, e.g., Milgrom (1981)). Monotonicity is a natural condition in social situations such as buyer-seller relationships; but there are obviously other situations in which the ideal action for a Sender varies with its type. Accordingly, we generalize Milgrom's result by replacing monotonicity with more general conditions on the Sender's preferences, which are sufficient for existence and uniqueness of a fully revealing equilibrium in verifiable message games. These conditions include all games in which preferences satisfy the conditions which Crawford-Sobel (1982) imposed on cheap talk games.

U2 - 10.2307/2171817

DO - 10.2307/2171817

M3 - Journal article

VL - 65

SP - 163

EP - 169

JO - Econometrica

JF - Econometrica

SN - 0012-9682

IS - 1

ER -