Equilibrium refinements in sender-receiver games

This paper examines the effectiveness of perturbation refinements in sender-receiver games. It is shown that babbling equilibria are always perfect and even proper. However, they need not be strategically stable. An example is given where the only strategically stable pooling equilibria are pure strategy equilibria. Furthermore, there exist examples in which none of the pooling equilibria is strategically stable. Persistence is effective in games with small message spaces. It rules out pooling equilibria in games which have strict separating equilibria but its effectiveness is not confined to these games. Journal of Economic Literature Classification Number: C72.