Talk:Cheap talk

Category: population genetics
This is an article about game theory. The applications to biology are important, but so are the applications (of game theory in general) to many other subjects. It wouldn't be appropriate to list all the categories relating to those subjects here and in the same way I don't think that this categorisation is appropriate.

I'm open-minded so please prove me wrong if you disagree. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Reetep (talk • contribs)

This article may be technically correct, but it seems quite wrong in style for Wikipedia. It is pitched too high and uses too much "academese". How is a layman expected to understand this:

"Consider a game comprising two players, a sender and a receiver. ... Nature chooses the sender's type at the start of the game, but this choice is unobserved by the receiver. The order of play is an action taken by the sender (a message) and then an action taken by the receiver. Crucially in a cheap talk game, the sender's action does not affect the payoff per se, insofar as for a given sender type and a given receiver action, payoffs will be the same regardless of the sender's message."

And please avoid references like "The sender has a non-singleton type space." This would be too abbreviated for an economics paper, and is completely out of place here. FWadel 10:17, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't believe cheap talk is costless but rather the cost is low enough that it does not prevent communication from occurring. Although I can't find a source for this one obvious cost would be oppurtunity cost. Mjakubowski (talk) 01:59, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Deleted section
I have deleted a section as a partial cleanup. Placing this diff here if anyone wants to retrieve anything from it. This section was tagged for cleanup since 2006. M W ℳ 12:33, 4 October 2011 (UTC)


 * bozln 136.232.79.206 (talk) 10:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Dr. Cabrales's comment on this article
Dr. Cabrales has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This is pretty good, but the application section is too short, and there are many more papers one could cite usefully."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Cabrales has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Antonio Cabrales & Piero Gottardi, 2008. "Markets for information : of inefficient firewalls and efficient monopolies," Economics Working Papers we080201, Universidad Carlos III, Departamento de Economia.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 10:59, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Dr. Schlag's comment on this article
Dr. Schlag has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"This entry is really about the seminal Crawford and Sobel (1982), for a general article on cheap talk the entry should contain also a brief overview of the literature on cheap talk. I would explicitly mention Farrell and Rabin (1996) as good reading. Explicit inclusion of Aumann's Stag Hunt could give a nice flavor of the literature on complete information.

Crawford and Sobel (1982) is about a sender receiver game in which the sender has private information and only the receiver makes a choice. There is also a literature on cheap talk in games with complete information. This is a different model, not an application of Crawford and Sobel (1982) as one might infer by the brief discussion in the "Applications" section.

The central obstacle in this literature is the existence of the babbling equilbrium. Adding cheap talk simply generates more predictions and we have no real understanding of communication, even in the Crawford and Sobel model. Several approaches have been suggested to circumvent this problem: including explicit communication protocols (Rabin, 1994), neologisms (Matthews et al., 1991), evolution (Demichelis and Weibull, 2008, Hurkens and Schlag, 2003), commuicative sequential equilibrium (Zultan, 2013), credible communication (Schlag and Vida, 2016).

Minor comments on the exposition: It is not true in CS 1982) that "When interests are aligned, then information is fully disclosed", as the babbling equilbrium always exists.

References: Demichelis, S., and J.W. Weibull (2008), "Language, Meaning, and Games: A Model of Communication, Coordination, and Evolution", American Economic Review 98, 1292-1311. Hurkens, S., and K.H. Schlag (2003), "Evolutionary Insights on the Willingness to Communicate", International Journal of Game Theory 31, 511-526. Matthews, S.A, M. Okuno-Fujiwara, and A. Postlewaite (1991), "Refining Cheap-Talk Equilibria", Journal of Economic Theory 55, 247-273. M. Rabin (1994), "A Model of Pre-Game Communication", Journal of Economic Theory 63, 370-391. Schlag, K.H., and Peter Vida (2016), Believing When Credible: Talking About Future Intentions and Past Actions, Mimeo, University of Vienna. Zultan, R. (2013), "Timing of Messages and the Aumann Conjecture: a Multiple-Selves Approach", International Journal of Game Theory 42, 789-800."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Schlag has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Schlag, Karl H. & Vida, Peter, 2013. "Commitments, Intentions, Truth and Nash Equilibria," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 438, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 18:58, 27 June 2016 (UTC)

Both Crawford and Sobel now have Wikipedia pages
Both Crawford and Sobel now have Wikipedia pages, which it would be good to link this page to. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MissAngieM (talk • contribs) 21:33, 15 February 2021 (UTC)
 * , done. Caius G. (talk) 17:38, 16 February 2021 (UTC)