Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Economic Value of Natural Language Communication

经济学博士论文研究：自然语言交流的经济价值

• 批准号: 1530519
• 负责人: Daniel Houser
• 金额: $ 1.02万
• 依托单位: George Mason University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-08-01 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1530519&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Economics; Economic

We propose a project to increase understanding of the economic value of natural language communication both theoretically and empirically. Language is a powerful and complex human tool facilitating social and economic decisions. The richly detailed structure of natural language has evidently survived an evolutionary process has led some economists to argue for its importance not only to understanding grammar but also for understanding human social and economic decisions. Consequently, it has been long argued that the existence of a rich language should play a more prominent role in game theory (see Farrell, 1993). At the same time, others have demonstrated empirically that, in in contrast to situations where players can engage in limited forms of communication, efficient economic outcomes emerge more readily when players can communicate using rich natural language. Our aim here is to present and test a formal framework that predicts people both use and respond to multi-meaning natural language in a way that improves coordination.This project investigates why cheap-talk natural language communication is systematically found to promote coordination better than predetermined intention signaling. We hypothesize the reason is that, when communicating with natural language, people both use and respond to intentions and attitudes, where attitude indicates the strength of a message sender's desire to have her message followed. We test our hypothesis using controlled laboratory experiments in both the United States and China. Our preliminary data has shown (i) free-form messages do include both signaled intentions and attitudes; (ii) people respond both to intentions and attitudes when making decisions; and (iii) the use of attitude significantly improves coordination. Moreover, while males and females recognize and respond to intentions and attitude equally well, we find females are more likely to send more demanding signals than males, while males send messages focused more on the equilibrium outcome than attitude. Overall, we find that natural language communication in our environment can be well-modeled by a language that includes both intentions and attitudes. We propose to conduct more experiments to assess whether these results are robust with a variety of games and within the context of social learning environments. In particular, building on a well-established literature, we propose to test the hypothesis that natural language brings unique value beyond that which is available from knowledge of social history or narrowly constructed advice. Our research helps to identify the features of natural language communication that promote coordination, and also sheds light on the nature of communication systems that may promote efficient economic outcomes.

我们提出了一个项目，以在理论和经验上既可以提高对自然语言交流的经济价值的理解。语言是一种强大而复杂的人类工具，促进了社会和经济决策。自然语言的详细结构显然幸存了一个进化过程，这使一些经济学家不仅要对理解语法，而且还因为理解人类的社会和经济决策而主张其重要性。因此，长期以来，人们一直认为，丰富的语言的存在应该在游戏理论中发挥更重要的作用（参见Farrell，1993）。同时，其他人则证明，与玩家可以参与有限形式的沟通，有效的经济成果的情况相反，当玩家可以使用丰富的自然语言进行沟通时，会更容易出现。我们的目的是介绍和测试一个正式的框架，以改善协调的方式预测人们使用并响应多种义务的自然语言。该项目研究了为什么系统地发现廉价的自然语言交流是系统地发现廉价的自然语言交流，从而比预定意图信号传达更好地促进协调能力。我们假设原因是，当人们与自然语言交流时，人们既利用又对意图和态度做出反应，态度表明了消息发件人渴望遵循她的信息的力量。我们在美国和中国都使用受控实验室实验检验假设。我们的初步数据显示了（i）自由形式消息确实包含了信号意愿和态度； （ii）人们在做出决定时对意图和态度做出回应； （iii）态度的使用显着改善了协调。此外，尽管男性和女性同样会认识到和对态度的认识和回应，但我们发现女性比男性更有可能发送苛刻的信号，而男性则传达的信息更多地关注均衡结果而不是态度。总体而言，我们发现我们环境中的自然语言交流可以通过包括意图和态度的语言进行良好的修改。我们建议进行更多的实验，以评估这些结果对各种游戏以及在社会学习环境的背景下是否有力。特别是，在建立良好的文献的基础上，我们建议检验以下假设，即自然语言带来了独特的价值，超出了社会历史知识或狭义的建议。我们的研究有助于确定促进协调的自然语言交流的特征，并阐明了可以促进有效的经济成果的通信系统的性质。