Strategic interpretations

Kfir Eliaz, Ran Spiegler () and Heidi Thysen

Journal of Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 192, issue C

Abstract: We study strategic communication when the sender's multi-dimensional messages are given an interpretation by the sender himself or by a proxy. Interpreting messages involves the provision of some data about their statistical state-dependence. Interpretation can be selective: different kinds of data interpret different sets of message components. The receiver uses this data to decipher messages, yet he does not draw any inferences from the kind of data he is given. In this way, strategic interpretation of messages can influence the receiver's understanding of their equilibrium meaning. We show that in a two-action, two-state setting, the sender can attain his first-best payoff when the prior on one state exceeds a threshold that decays quickly with message dimensionality. We examine the result's robustness to the critique that our receiver does not attempt any inferences from selective interpretations.

Keywords: Persuasion; Bounded rationality; Model misspecification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053121000090
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Strategic interpretations (2021)
Working Paper: Strategic Interpretations (2019)
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:eee:jetheo:v:192:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121000090

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105192

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

More articles in Journal of Economic Theory from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().