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Signaling Games

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Complex Social and Behavioral Systems

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science Series ((ECSSS))

  • Originally published in
  • R. A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2015

Glossary

Babbling equilibrium:

An equilibrium in which the sender’s strategy is independent of type and the receiver’s strategy is independent of signal.

Behavior strategy:

A strategy for an extensive-form game that specifies the probability of taking each action at each information set.

Behavioral type:

A player in a game who is constrained to follow a given strategy.

Cheap-talk game:

A signaling game in which players’ preferences do not depend directly on signals.

Condition D1:

An equilibrium refinement that requires out-of-equilibrium beliefs to be supported on types that have the most to gain from deviating from a fixed equilibrium.

Divinity:

An equilibrium refinement that requires out-of-equilibrium beliefs to place relatively more weight on types that gain more from deviating from a fixed equilibrium.

Equilibrium outcome:

The probability distribution over terminal nodes determined by an equilibrium strategy in a game.

Handicap principle:

The idea that animals communicate fitness...

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Chakraborty and Rick Harbaugh (2010) construct informative equilibria in a game in which the sender’s preferences are independent of type.

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Acknowledgments

I thank the Guggenheim Foundation, NSF, and the Secretaría de Estado de Universidades e Investigación del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (Spain) for financial support and Richard Brady, Kanako Goulding Hotta, and Jose Penalva for their comments. I am grateful to the Departament d’Economia i d’Història Econòmica and Institut d’Anàlisi Econòmica of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona for hospitality and administrative support.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA

    Joel Sobel

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  1. Joel Sobel
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Correspondence to Joel Sobel .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Sao Paulo, EPGE Brazilian School of Economics and Finance, Sao Paulo, Brazil

    Marilda Sotomayor

  2. Dept. of Economics and Economic History, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Barcelona GSE, Barcelona, Spain

    David Pérez-Castrillo

  3. Istituto Applicazioni del Calcolo (IAC), Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Rome, Italy

    Filippo Castiglione

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Sobel, J. (2020). Signaling Games. In: Sotomayor, M., Pérez-Castrillo, D., Castiglione, F. (eds) Complex Social and Behavioral Systems . Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science Series. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0368-0_481

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