Information Independence and Common Knowledge

Olivier Gossner, Ehud Kalai and Robert Weber
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Olivier Gossner: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris-Jourdan Sciences Economiques - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Robert Weber: Northwestern University [Evanston]

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: In Bayesian environments with private information, as described by the types of Harsanyi, how can types of agents be (statistically) disassociated from each other and how are such disassociations reflected in the agents' knowledge structure? Conditions studied are (i) subjective independence (the opponents' types are independent conditional on one's own) and (ii) type disassociation under common knowledge (the agents' types are independent, conditional on some common-knowledge variable). Subjective independence is motivated by its implications in Bayesian games and in studies of equilibrium concepts. We find that a variable that disassociates types is more informative than any common-knowledge variable. With three or more agents, conditions (i) and (ii) are equivalent. They also imply that any variable which is common knowledge to two agents is common knowledge to all, and imply the existence of a unique common-knowledge variable that disassociates types, which is the one defined by Aumann.

Keywords: Bayesian games; Independent types; Common knowledge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in Econometrica, 2009, 77 (4), pp.1317-1328. ⟨10.3982/ECTA7469⟩

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Related works:
Journal Article: Information Independence and Common Knowledge (2009)
Working Paper: Information Independence and Common Knowledge (2009)
Working Paper: Information Independence and Common Knowledge (2009)
Working Paper: Information Independence and Common Knowledge (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:hal-00795661

DOI: 10.3982/ECTA7469

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