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Four Costly Signaling Mechanisms

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2021

KAI QUEK Open the ORCID record for KAI QUEK [Opens in a new window]
KAI QUEK*
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
*
Kai Quek, Associate Professor of Politics, Department of Politics and Public Administration, The University of Hong Kong, quek@hku.hk.
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Abstract

Two mechanisms of costly signaling are known in international relations: sinking costs and tying hands. I show that there exist four mechanisms of costly signaling that are equally general. I develop the new mechanisms of installment costs and reducible costs and contrast them with sunk costs and tied-hands costs. I then conduct experiments to test the four signaling mechanisms. I find that each mechanism can improve credibility when the costs are high, but reducible costs can improve credibility even when the costs are low.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 2 , May 2021 , pp. 537 - 549
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

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Footnotes

I am grateful to David Clark, James Fearon, and Nicholas Miller for their comments on the paper; Dan Altman, Christina Davis, Brad DeWees, Erik Gartzke, Naima Green, Austin Jordan, Koji Kagotani, Joshua Kertzer, Shuhei Kurizaki, Marika Landau-Wells, Aidan Milliff, Yon Soo Park, Reid Pauly, Alastair Smith, Michael Tomz, Ketian Zhang, and seminar participants at Harvard, MIT and the 2018 Pacific International Politics Conference for their feedback; John Koo and Eddy Yeung for their assistance; and the University of Hong Kong and its OYRA scheme for financial support. I also thank the editors and seven anonymous reviewers at APSR for their thoughtful suggestions. The standard disclaimers apply. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/P6N636.

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