Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Economic Value of Natural Language Communication

经济学博士论文研究：自然语言交流的经济价值

• 批准号: 1530519
• 负责人: Daniel Houser
• 金额: $ 1.02万
• 依托单位: George Mason University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1530519&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Economic

We propose a project to increase understanding of the economic value of natural language communication both theoretically and empirically. Language is a powerful and complex human tool facilitating social and economic decisions. The richly detailed structure of natural language has evidently survived an evolutionary process has led some economists to argue for its importance not only to understanding grammar but also for understanding human social and economic decisions. Consequently, it has been long argued that the existence of a rich language should play a more prominent role in game theory (see Farrell, 1993). At the same time, others have demonstrated empirically that, in in contrast to situations where players can engage in limited forms of communication, efficient economic outcomes emerge more readily when players can communicate using rich natural language. Our aim here is to present and test a formal framework that predicts people both use and respond to multi-meaning natural language in a way that improves coordination.This project investigates why cheap-talk natural language communication is systematically found to promote coordination better than predetermined intention signaling. We hypothesize the reason is that, when communicating with natural language, people both use and respond to intentions and attitudes, where attitude indicates the strength of a message sender's desire to have her message followed. We test our hypothesis using controlled laboratory experiments in both the United States and China. Our preliminary data has shown (i) free-form messages do include both signaled intentions and attitudes; (ii) people respond both to intentions and attitudes when making decisions; and (iii) the use of attitude significantly improves coordination. Moreover, while males and females recognize and respond to intentions and attitude equally well, we find females are more likely to send more demanding signals than males, while males send messages focused more on the equilibrium outcome than attitude. Overall, we find that natural language communication in our environment can be well-modeled by a language that includes both intentions and attitudes. We propose to conduct more experiments to assess whether these results are robust with a variety of games and within the context of social learning environments. In particular, building on a well-established literature, we propose to test the hypothesis that natural language brings unique value beyond that which is available from knowledge of social history or narrowly constructed advice. Our research helps to identify the features of natural language communication that promote coordination, and also sheds light on the nature of communication systems that may promote efficient economic outcomes.

我们提出了一个项目，以增加对自然语言交流的经济价值的理解，从理论上和经验上。语言是促进社会和经济决策的强大而复杂的人类工具。自然语言的丰富细节结构显然在进化过程中幸存下来，这使得一些经济学家认为，它不仅对理解语法，而且对理解人类的社会和经济决策都很重要。因此，长期以来人们一直认为，丰富语言的存在应该在博弈论中发挥更重要的作用（见Farrell， 1993）。与此同时，其他人的经验证明，与玩家只能参与有限形式的交流的情况相反，当玩家能够使用丰富的自然语言进行交流时，有效的经济结果更容易出现。我们在这里的目标是提出并测试一个正式框架，该框架预测人们以一种改善协调的方式使用和响应多意义自然语言。这个项目研究了为什么廉价的自然语言交流被系统地发现比预定的意图信号更能促进协调。我们假设原因是，当用自然语言交流时，人们会使用并回应意图和态度，其中态度表明了信息发送者希望信息被关注的程度。我们在美国和中国使用对照实验室实验来检验我们的假设。我们的初步数据显示：(i)自由形式的信息确实包括所表达的意图和态度；（ii）人们在做决定时同时对意图和态度作出反应；（三）态度的使用显著提高了协调性。此外，虽然男性和女性对意图和态度的认知和反应都一样好，但我们发现女性比男性更有可能发出更多要求的信号，而男性发出的信息更关注平衡结果而不是态度。总的来说，我们发现在我们的环境中，自然语言交流可以通过包含意图和态度的语言来很好地建模。我们建议进行更多的实验，以评估这些结果是否适用于各种游戏和社会学习环境。特别是，在一个完善的文献基础上，我们建议测试自然语言带来独特价值的假设，而不是从社会历史知识或狭隘的建议中获得的价值。我们的研究有助于识别促进协调的自然语言交流的特征，也揭示了可能促进有效经济成果的交流系统的本质。