论文标题
通过信令的信息启示
Information Revelation Through Signalling
论文作者
论文摘要
本文研究了一款Stackelberg游戏，其中发件人（领导者）试图塑造知情接收者（追随者）的信息，后者又采取了决定两个玩家的回报的行动。发件人选择信号来最大化其自己的实用程序功能，而接收器的目的是确定发件人私下已知的源的值。众所周知，这种发送者接收器游戏承认了大量的均衡，并非发件人的所有信号都可以依赖为真实。我们的主要贡献是对最小数量的不同源符号数量的确切表征，该符号可以由接收器正确地恢复到\ textit {any}平衡中；我们称此数量为发送者的\ textit {信息性}。我们表明，信息性是由效用函数引起的某个图的\ textit {vertex clique cover number}给出的，可以单独根据效用函数对其进行计算，而无需列举所有平衡。我们发现，信息性的特征是众所周知的分离，合并和半分离均衡的阶段。我们还将信息性与接收者获得的信息量进行比较，当它是领导者时获得的信息，并表明信息性总是大于后者，这意味着接收者最好是作为追随者。此外，我们还表明，当玩家发挥行为策略时，可能不存在平衡。
This paper studies a Stackelberg game wherein a sender (leader) attempts to shape the information of a less informed receiver (follower) who in turn takes an action that determines the payoff for both players. The sender chooses signals to maximize its own utility function while the receiver aims to ascertain the value of a source that is privately known to the sender. It is well known that such sender-receiver games admit a vast number of equilibria and not all signals from the sender can be relied on as truthful. Our main contribution is an exact characterization of the minimum number of distinct source symbols that can be correctly recovered by a receiver in \textit{any} equilibrium of this game; we call this quantity the \textit{informativeness} of the sender. We show that the informativeness is given by the \textit{vertex clique cover number} of a certain graph induced by the utility function, whereby it can be computed based on the utility function alone without the need to enumerate all equilibria. We find that informativeness characterizes the existence of well-known classes of separating, pooling and semi-separating equilibria. We also compare informativeness with the amount of information obtained by the receiver when it is the leader and show that the informativeness is always greater than the latter, implying that the receiver is better off being a follower. Additionally, we also show that when the players play behavioral strategies, an equilibrium may not exist.
