Pragmatic languages with universal grammars

B-Tier
Journal: Games and Economic Behavior
Year: 2012
Volume: 76
Issue: 2
Pages: 738-752

Score contribution per author:

0.670 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 1.0x B-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

This paper constructs the equilibrium for a specific code that can be seen as a “universal grammar” in a class of common interest Sender–Receiver games where players communicate through a noisy channel. We propose a Senderʼs signaling strategy which does not depend on either the game payoffs or the initial probability distribution. The Receiverʼs strategy partitions the set of possible sequences into subsets, with a single action assignment to each of them. The Senderʼs signaling strategy is a Nash equilibrium, i.e. when the Receiver responds best to the Senderʼs strategy, the Sender has no incentive to deviate. An example shows that a tie-breaking decoding is crucial for the block-coding strategy to be an equilibrium. Efficiency is analyzed by comparing how close ex-ante expected payoffs are to those of noiseless communication. Moreover, we study how long communication should be to achieve a given payoff-approximation.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:gamebe:v:76:y:2012:i:2:p:738-752
Journal Field
Theory
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-29