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理论和经验的经济价值的理解。语言是一种强大而复杂的人类工具，有助于社会和经济决策。自然语言的丰富的细节结构显然经历了一个进化过程，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社会和经济决策都很重要。因此，长期以来一直认为丰富语言的存在应该在博弈论中发挥更突出的作用（参见Farrell，1993）。与此同时，其他人已经通过经验证明，与参与者可以进行有限形式的沟通的情况相反，当参与者可以使用丰富的自然语言进行沟通时，更容易产生有效的经济成果。我们的目标是提出和测试一个正式的框架，预测人们都使用和响应多意义的自然语言的方式，提高coordination.This项目调查为什么廉价的谈话自然语言沟通系统地发现，以促进协调比预定的意图信号。我们假设的原因是，当与自然语言沟通时，人们都使用和响应的意图和态度，其中的态度表明了一个消息发送者的愿望，她的消息如下的强度。我们使用美国和中国的对照实验室实验来验证我们的假设。我们的初步数据表明：（1）自由形式的信息确实包括意向和态度;（2）人们在做决定时对意向和态度都有反应;（3）态度的使用显著提高了协调性。此外，虽然男性和女性的认识和反应的意图和态度一样好，我们发现女性更有可能发送更多的要求比男性的信号，而男性发送的信息更侧重于均衡的结果比态度。总的来说，我们发现，在我们的环境中的自然语言通信可以很好地建模的语言，包括意图和态度。我们建议进行更多的实验，以评估这些结果是否与各种游戏和社会学习环境的背景下是强大的。特别是，建立在一个完善的文献，我们建议测试的假设，自然语言带来了独特的价值，超出了这是从社会历史知识或狭隘的建议。我们的研究有助于识别促进协调的自然语言沟通的特征，并揭示了可能促进有效经济成果的沟通系统的性质。