COMMUNICATION-PROOF EQUILIBRIA IN CHEAP-TALK GAMES

We define communication-proof equilibria in simple games of communicat ion. These equilibria satisfy a stability condition guaranteeing that they would not be affected if new opportunities to communicate arose. We look for partitions of possible equilibria into sets of good and ba d equilibria. The good equilibria are those that cannot be destabilize d by another good equilibrium. The remaining equilibria are bad. An eq uilibrium for the original game is communication proof if its is a goo d equilibrium in a partition of this form. We prove that communication -proof equilibria exist and, for a class of common-interest games, com munication-proof outcomes are efficient. (C) 1995 Academic Press, Inc.