Correlation in the Multiplayer Electronic Mail Game

Peter A. Coles and Ran Shorrer

Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar

Abstract: In variants of the Electronic Mail Game (Rubinstein, 1989) where two or more players communicate via multiple channels, the multiple channels can facilitate collective action via redundancy, the sending of the same message along multiple paths or else repeatedly along the same path (Chwe, 1995 and De Jaegher, 2011). This paper offers another explanation for how multiple channels may permit collective action: parties may be able to coordinate their actions when messages' arrivals at their destinations are sufficiently correlated events. Correlation serves to fill in information gaps that arise when players are uncertain of the source of message failure, effectively strengthening messages from one player. This asymmetry in message strength in turn permits cutoff equilibria, where players take action after receiving a minimum number of confirmations.

New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-gth and nep-mic
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://scholar.harvard.edu/ran/node/89381

Related works:
Journal Article: Correlation in the Multiplayer Electronic Mail Game (2012)
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:qsh:wpaper:89381

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Paper from Harvard University OpenScholar Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Richard Brandon ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).