The context of the game

Amanda Friedenberg () and Martin Meier ()
Additional contact information
Amanda Friedenberg: Arizona State University
Martin Meier: Institut für Höhere Studien

Economic Theory, 2017, vol. 63, issue 2, No 1, 347-386

Abstract: Abstract We study games of incomplete information and argue that it is important to correctly specify the “context” within which hierarchies of beliefs lie. We consider a situation where the players understand more than the analyst: It is transparent to the players—but not to the analyst—that certain hierarchies of beliefs are precluded. In particular, the players’ type structure can be viewed as a strict subset of the analyst’s type structure. How does this affect a Bayesian equilibrium analysis? One natural conjecture is that this doesn’t change the analysis—i.e., every equilibrium of the players’ type structure can be associated with an equilibrium of the analyst’s type structure. We show that this conjecture is wrong. Bayesian equilibrium may fail an Extension Property. This can occur even in the case where the game is finite and the analyst uses the so-called universal structure (to analyze the game)—and, even, if the associated Bayesian game has an equilibrium. We go on to explore specific situations in which the Extension Property is satisfied.

Keywords: Bayesian games; Universal type structure; Robustness; Hierarchies of beliefs; Context (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 C72 D80 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s00199-015-0938-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:spr:joecth:v:63:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s00199-015-0938-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... eory/journal/199/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00199-015-0938-z

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Theory is currently edited by Nichoals Yanneils

More articles in Economic Theory from Springer, Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().