PUBLIC POLICY MESSAGING IN THE AGE OF GLOBALIZATION, CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RISE OF POPULISM: MANAGING GAME THEORETIC INTERACTIONS.

In this paper, we highlight that the global economy, which is made up of gametheoretic interactions between multinational corporations, governments, and citizens is facing an unprecedented level of adversity. This adversity is intense due to a nexus of events such as the war in Europe, a focus on climate change, global inflation, and rising populism in a variety of regions of the world. We propose that the problems facing the global economy and its decision-makers are exacerbated, and made more difficult to resolve, due to the extensive employment of propaganda techniques used by multinational corporations and governments. Even some marketing professionals aid in the employment of propaganda communication techniques. As a result, the citizens play these economic games with manipulated payoffs and make choices that do not reflect reality. When the game theoretic settlement occurs, actual payoffs reveal themselves, thus causing confusion and unexpected outcomes for at least the citizens. Furthermore, the discrepancy between manipulated payoffs and actual payoffs fuels populism, thus making the global economic situation riskier than it otherwise would be. In this paper, we propose that marketing professionals should reject aiding the use of propaganda communication techniques against citizens in order to aid global economic stability and efficient resource allocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]