THE E-MAIL GAME REVISITED — MODELING ROUGH INDUCTIVE REASONING

Abstract

I study the robustness of Rubinstein's (1989) E-Mail Game results by varying the information that players can utilize. The article follows one of Morris' (2002) reactions to the E-Mail game "that one should try to come up with a model of boundedly rational behavior that delivers predictions that are insensitive to whether there is common knowledge or a large number of levels of knowledge". Players in my model are presumed to use 'rough inductive reasoning' because they cannot utilize exact information. The information structure in the E-Mail game is generalized and the conditions are characterized under which Rubinstein's results hold. I find that rough inductive reasoning generates a payoff dominant equilibrium where the expected payoffs change continuously (instead of discretely) in the probability of "faulty" communication.