Promises and endogenous reneging costs

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Heller, Yuval; Sturrock, David
• 署名单位: Bar Ilan University; University of London; University College London; University of London; London School Economics & Political Science
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2020.105024
• 发表日期: 2020
• 关键词: promises; Strategic complements; Lying costs; Input games; Partnership games

摘要

We present a novel mechanism that explains how nonenforceable communication about future actions has the capacity to improve efficiency. We explore a two-player partnership game where each player, before choosing a level of effort to exert on a joint project, makes a cheap talk promise to his partner about his own future effort. We allow agents to incur a psychological cost of reneging on their promises. We demonstrate a strong tendency for evolutionary processes to select agents who incur intermediate costs of reneging, and show that these costs induce second-best optimal outcomes. (C) 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.