A Reformulation of a Criticism of The Intuitive Criterion and Forward Induction

by George J. Mailath

April 1988 (references updated July 2002)

The intuitive criterion of Kreps has been criticized by Stiglitz (see Cho and Kreps (1987), Mailath, Okuno-Fujiwara, and Postlewaite (1993), and van Damme (1989)) for seeming inconsistencies in the way the reasoning is applied. Using the beer-quiche game as an example, this note recasts their criticism in a normal form argument which disputes the persuasiveness of the (naive) argument for not only the intuitive criterion, but also the requirement of robustness to elimination of never a weak best response (NWBR) strategies of Kohlberg and Mertens (1986)(a more general requirement which implies the intuitive criterion).

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Updated July 18, 2002 .