Agree or Convince

Ata Özkaya

No 12-3, GIAM Working Papers from Galatasaray University Economic Research Center

Abstract: We continue the work of Aumann (Ann. Statist. 4 (1976), 1236-1239), Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (J. Econ. Theory 28 (1982), 192-200) on common knowledge and consensus, reconsidering the arguments and the findings of both Aumann (1976) and Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (1982) and offering different insights into the revision process. By revealing set inclusion property of the revision process, we show that the consensus conditions should be redefined. This redefinition enables us to demonstrate that until consensus is reached, in fact neither of the agents make apparent revision and each agent keeps repeating his initial posterior. Therefore the equilibrium posterior should be equal to initial posterior of the agent who does not make any apparent revision through the communication process. Our results show that regardless of the length of the communication process, it is impossible for the agents to agree on a value which is different from the initial posteriors. Finally, we shed light on some crucial points left unclear by Aumann (1976) and Geanakoplos and Polemarchakis (1982).

Keywords: Communication; consensus; information; agreeing to disagree (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 D70 D82 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 8 pages
Date: 2012-05-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://giam.gsu.edu.tr/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/WP-12-03.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:giamwp:2012_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GIAM Working Papers from Galatasaray University Economic Research Center Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Renginar Senses Dayangac ().