Applications of Repeated Games in Wireless Networks: A Survey

A repeated game is an effective tool to model interactions and conflicts for players aiming to achieve their objectives in a long-term basis. Contrary to static noncooperative games that model an interaction among players in only one period, in repeated games, interactions of players repeat for multiple periods; and thus the players become aware of other players' past behaviors and their future benefits, and will adapt their behavior accordingly. In wireless networks, conflicts among wireless nodes can lead to selfish behaviors, resulting in poor network performances and detrimental individual payoffs. In this paper, we survey the applications of repeated games in different wireless networks. The main goal is to demonstrate the use of repeated games to encourage wireless nodes to cooperate, thereby improving network performances and avoiding network disruption due to selfish behaviors. Furthermore, various problems in wireless networks and variations of repeated game models together with the corresponding solutions are discussed in this survey. Finally, we outline some open issues and future research directions.Comment: 32 pages, 15 figures, 5 tables, 168 reference

Hybrid Assessment Scheme Based on the Stern-Judging Rule for Maintaining Cooperation under Indirect Reciprocity

Intensive studies on indirect reciprocity have explored rational assessment rules for maintaining cooperation and several have demonstrated the effects of the stern-judging rule. Uchida and Sasaki demonstrated that the stern-judging rule is not suitable for maintaining cooperative regimes in private assessment conditions while a public assessment system has been assumed in most studies. Although both assessment systems are oversimplified and society is most accurately represented by a mixture of these systems, little analysis has been reported on their mixture. Here, we investigated how much weight on the use of information originating from a public source is needed to maintain cooperative regimes for players adopting the stern-judging rule when players get information from both public and private sources. We did this by considering a hybrid-assessment scheme in which players use both assessment systems and by using evolutionary game theory. We calculated replicator equations using the expected payoffs of three strategies: unconditional cooperation, unconditional defection, and stern-judging rule adoption. Our analysis shows that the use of the rule helps to maintain cooperation if reputation information from a unique public notice board is used with more than a threshold probability. This hybrid-assessment scheme can be applied to other rules, including the simple-standing rule and the staying rule

Overcoming Incentive Constraints? The (In-)effectiveness of Social Interaction

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences. Applying the linking mechanism suggested by Jackson and Sonnenschein (2005) captures nearly all achievable efficiency gains. Repeated interaction leads to significant gains in truthful representation and efficiency only if players can choose their partners.Experimental Economics, Mechanism Design, Implementation, Linking, Bayesian Equilibrium, Efficiency

Sustainable Reputations with Rating Systems

In a product choice game played between a long lived seller and an infnite sequence of buyers, we assume that buyers cannot observe past signals. To facilitate the analysis of applications such as online auctions (e.g. eBay), online shopping search engines (e.g. BizRate.com) and consumer reports, we assume that a central mechanism observes all past signals, and makes public announcements every period. The set of announcements and the mapping from observed signals to the set of announcements is called a rating system. We show that, absent reputation effects, information censoring cannot improve attainable payoffs. However, if there is an initial probability that the seller is a commitment type that plays a particular strategy every period, then there exists a finite rating system and an equilibrium of the resulting game such that, the expected present discounted payoff of the seller is almost his Stackelberg payoff after every history. This is in contrast to Cripps, Mailath and Samuelson (2004), where it is shown that reputation effects do not last forever in such games if buyers can observe all past signals. We also construct .nite rating systems that increase payoffs of almost all buyers, while decreasing the seller’s payoff.Reputations, Rating Systems, Online Reputation Mechanisms, Disappearing Reputations, Permanent Reputations. JEL Classification Numbers: D82

Disappearing private reputations in long-run relationships

For games of public reputation with uncertainty over types and imperfect public monitoring, Cripps et al. [Imperfect monitoring and impermanent reputations, Econometrica 72 (2004) 407–432] showed that an informed player facing short-lived uninformed opponents cannot maintain a permanent reputation for playing a strategy that is not part of an equilibrium of the game without uncertainty over types. This paper extends that result to games in which the uninformed player is long-lived and has private beliefs, so that the informed player's reputation is private. The rate at which reputations disappear is uniform across equilibria and reputations also disappear in sufficiently long discounted finitely repeated games

Mechanisms for efficient voting with private information about preferences

We experimentally study behavior in a simple voting game where players have private information about their preferences. With random matching, subjects overwhelmingly follow the dominant strategy to exaggerate their preferences, which leads to inefficiency. We analyze an exogenous linking mechanism suggested by Jackson and Sonnenschein (2007) as well as repeated interaction in different settings, which could allow endogenous linking mechanisms to evolve. We find that applying the exogenous mechanism captures nearly all achievable efficiency gains, whereas repeated interaction leads to significant gains in truthful representation and efficiency only in a setting where players can choose their partners. --Experimental Economics,Mechanism Design,Implementation,Linking,Bayesian Equilibrium,Efficiency

Incentive Mechanisms for Participatory Sensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Participatory sensing is a powerful paradigm which takes advantage of smartphones to collect and analyze data beyond the scale of what was previously possible. Given that participatory sensing systems rely completely on the users' willingness to submit up-to-date and accurate information, it is paramount to effectively incentivize users' active and reliable participation. In this paper, we survey existing literature on incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems. In particular, we present a taxonomy of existing incentive mechanisms for participatory sensing systems, which are subsequently discussed in depth by comparing and contrasting different approaches. Finally, we discuss an agenda of open research challenges in incentivizing users in participatory sensing.Comment: Updated version, 4/25/201

Three alternative (?) stories on the late 20th-century rise of game theory

The paper presents three different reconstructions of the 1980s boom of game theory and its rise to the present status of indispensable tool-box for modern economics. The first story focuses on the Nash refinements literature and on the development of Bayesian games. The second emphasizes the role of antitrust case law, and in particular of the rehabilitation, via game theory, of some traditional antitrust prohibitions and limitations which had been challenged by the Chicago approach. The third story centers on the wealth of issues classifiable under the general headline of "mechanism design" and on the game theoretical tools and methods which have been applied to tackle them. The bottom lines are, first, that the three stories need not be viewed as conflicting, but rather as complementary, and, second, that in all stories a central role has been played by John Harsanyi and Bayesian decision theory.game theory; mechanism design; refinements of Nash equilibrium; antitrust law; John Harsanyi