Viewed in this way, the intellectual process of arriving at “rational expectations” in the full-communication bargaining game is virtually identical with the intellectual process of arriving at a coordinated choice in the tacit game. The actual solutions might be different because the game contexts might be different, with different suggestive details; but the nature of the two solutions seems virtually identical since both depend on an agreement that is reached by tacit consent. This is true because the explicit agreement that is reached in the full-communication game corresponds to a priori expectations that were reached (or in theory could have been reached) jointly but independently by the two players before the bargaining started. And it is like a tacit agreement in the sense that both can hold confident rational expectations only if both are aware that both accept the indicated solution in advance as the outcome that they both know they both expect.

DEFINE: Clarifies that the process of arriving at rational expectations is structurally identical whether coordination is tacit or through full communication, differing only in context and suggestive details.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 858