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Strategic Inattention in the Sir Philip Sidney Game

View ORCID ProfileMark Whitmeyer
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/559955
Mark Whitmeyer
*Hausdorff Center for Mathematics & Institute for Microeconomics, University of Bonn
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Abstract

Infamously, the presence of honest communication in a signaling environment may be difficult to reconcile with small (relative) signaling costs or a low degree of common interest between sender (beneficiary) and receiver (donor). This paper posits that one mechanism through which such communication can arise is through inattention on the part of the receiver, which allows for honest communication in settings where–should the receiver be fully attentive–honest communication would be impossible. We explore this idea through the Sir Philip Sidney game in detail and show that some degree of inattention is always weakly better for the receiver and may be strictly better. We compare limited attention to Lachmann and Bergstrom’s (1998) notion of a signaling medium and show that the receiver-optimal degree of inattention is equivalent to the receiver-optimal choice of medium.

Competing Interest Statement

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted August 23, 2020.
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Strategic Inattention in the Sir Philip Sidney Game
Mark Whitmeyer
bioRxiv 559955; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/559955
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Strategic Inattention in the Sir Philip Sidney Game
Mark Whitmeyer
bioRxiv 559955; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/559955

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