CHEAP TALK, COORDINATION, AND EVOLUTIONARY STABILITY

Asymmetric information games where the informed player can send a costless message (sender-receiver games) typically have equilibria where meaningful communication occurs. We therefore know such "cheap talk" can matter. Still, even when there is no conflict of interest, there are also equilibria where no information transmission occurs. This paper shows that for a class of games with perfectly coinciding interests modeled as asymmetric contests, where players are unsure of which role they will have, only meaningful communication is evolutionarily stable. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers C70, C72, D82. © 1993 Academic Press. All rights reserved.