Communication under language barriers

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Giovannoni, Francesco; Xiong, Siyang
• 署名单位: University of Bristol
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2018.12.009
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 274-303
• 关键词: Cheap talk; Language barriers; Mediation; Noisy talk; COMMUNICATION; information transmission

摘要

We study the welfare effect of language barriers in communication. Specifically, we compare the equilibrium welfare in a game with language barriers to that in the equivalent game without language barriers. We show how and why language barriers may (weakly) improve welfare by providing two positive results. First, in a game with any language barriers, we prove that if we allow for N-dimensional communication, any equilibrium outcome of the equivalent game without language barriers can be replicated. Second, for any payoff primitive, we provide a welfare ranking for several noisy-communication devices, including language barriers, that generalizes the results in Goltsman et al. (2009). In particular, our results imply that there always exist some language barriers whose maximal equilibrium welfare (always weakly and sometimes strictly) dominates any noisy-talk equilibrium (and hence also any cheap-talk equilibrium) under no language barriers. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.