How Much Common Belief is Necessary for a Convention?
Song Shin Hyun, Timothy L. Williamson · 1999
Abstract Coordination problems come in many forms. A case of particular interest to students of norms and conventions is that in which the payoff function of the coordination game depends on the state of nature. In such an environment, the possibility of conditioning one’s actions on some signal of the state of nature adds an extra dimension to the coordination problem, and makes it a more accurate representation of the problem of day-to-day interaction in which individuals face a variety of coordination problems determined by the state of nature. In such an environment, the problem becomes one of coordinating on the most advantageous set of rules of action, where each player’s rule of action maps a possible realization of his signal to an action.