Equilibrium Refinement in Finite Evidence Games


Abstract in English

Evidence games study situations where a sender persuades a receiver by selectively disclosing hard evidence about an unknown state of the world. Evidence games often have multiple equilibria. Hart et al. (2017) propose to focus on truth-leaning equilibria, i.e., perfect Bayesian equilibria where the sender prefers disclosing truthfully when indifferent, and the receiver takes off-path disclosure at face value. They show that a truth-leaning equilibrium is an equilibrium of a perturbed game where the sender has an infinitesimal reward for truth-telling. We show that, when the receivers action space is finite, truth-leaning equilibrium may fail to exist, and it is not equivalent to equilibrium of the perturbed game. To restore existence, we introduce a disturbed game with a small uncertainty about the receivers payoff. A purifiable equilibrium is a truth-leaning equilibrium in an infinitesimally disturbed game. It exists and features a simple characterization. A truth-leaning equilibrium that is also purifiable is an equilibrium of the perturbed game.

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