Communication, Perception, and Strategic Obfuscation

交流是经济活动的许多方面的关键组成部分，更普遍的是社会交往。律师需要传达他们所代表的当事人的信息;中央银行提供有关经济状况的信息;研究人员传播他们的工作成果;求职者向潜在雇主报告他们的资格;公司向投资者报告他们的进展。复杂的信息需要努力沟通和理解。在不采取不诚实手段的情况下，知情实体可以通过使有害信息更加难以破译来减轻其影响，例如通过信息过载或语言不清。虽然信息经济学在过去50年的发展极大地提高了我们对信息如何影响战略行为的理解，但许多模型仍然忽视了沟通，获取和处理信息的复杂性。本研究的目的是了解当信息可能难以传递和/或处理时，个人之间的沟通程度。该项目将阐明在如此广泛相关的环境中，注意力和激励如何塑造行为，以及为什么防止撒谎或遗漏的政策可能不足以解决透明度问题。该项目从理论和实验角度研究沟通、感知和战略混淆之间的重要相互作用。首先，PI将检查昂贵的通信和感知模型的可测试的含义;也就是说，他们将描述一组观察到的行为，这些行为与他们的模型一致，用于一些潜在的成本函数。其次，他们将展示如何在理性疏忽的实验测试的最新发展的基础上，测试战略混淆;也就是说，他们从一个单独的决策问题，互动设置的复杂性。最后，他们将使用一种新颖的实验设计来测试他们的理论，该实验设计强调了有限感知对通信游戏中策略混淆的影响。

Project abstractCommunication is a key component of many aspects of economic activities, and more generally of social interactions. Lawyers need to convey information about the parties they represent; central banks provide information about the state of the economy; researchers disseminate results from their work; job candidates report their qualifications to potential employers; firms report their progress to investors. Complex information requires effort both to communicate and understand. Without resorting to dishonesty, an informed entity may be able to mitigate the effect of detrimental information by making it more difficult to decipher, for instance through information over-load or unclear language. While the development of information economics over the past fifty years has greatly improved our understanding of how information affects strategic behavior, many models still overlook the complexities of communicating, acquiring and processing information. The purpose of this study is to understand the extent of communication between individuals when information may be difficult to transmit and/or process. This project will clarify how attention and incentives shape behavior in such widely relevant settings, and why policies preventing lying or omission may be insufficient to address issues of transparency.The project looks at the important interplay between communication, perception and strategic obfuscation from both theoretical and experimental angles. First, the PIs will examine the testable implications of a model of costly communication and perception; that is, they will characterize the set of observed behaviors which are consistent with their model for some underlying cost functions. Second, they will show how one can build on recent developments in experimental tests of rational inattention to test strategic obfuscation; that is, they move from an individual decision problem to the complexities of an interactive setting. Finally, they will test their theory experimentally using a novel experimental design that highlights the impact of limited perception on strategic obfuscation in communication games.