6,862 research outputs found
Existence of equilibria in countable games: an algebraic approach
Although mixed extensions of finite games always admit equilibria, this is
not the case for countable games, the best-known example being Wald's
pick-the-larger-integer game. Several authors have provided conditions for the
existence of equilibria in infinite games. These conditions are typically of
topological nature and are rarely applicable to countable games. Here we
establish an existence result for the equilibrium of countable games when the
strategy sets are a countable group and the payoffs are functions of the group
operation. In order to obtain the existence of equilibria, finitely additive
mixed strategies have to be allowed. This creates a problem of selection of a
product measure of mixed strategies. We propose a family of such selections and
prove existence of an equilibrium that does not depend on the selection. As a
byproduct we show that if finitely additive mixed strategies are allowed, then
Wald's game admits an equilibrium. We also prove existence of equilibria for
nontrivial extensions of matching-pennies and rock-scissors-paper. Finally we
extend the main results to uncountable games
From winning strategy to Nash equilibrium
Game theory is usually considered applied mathematics, but a few
game-theoretic results, such as Borel determinacy, were developed by
mathematicians for mathematics in a broad sense. These results usually state
determinacy, i.e. the existence of a winning strategy in games that involve two
players and two outcomes saying who wins. In a multi-outcome setting, the
notion of winning strategy is irrelevant yet usually replaced faithfully with
the notion of (pure) Nash equilibrium. This article shows that every
determinacy result over an arbitrary game structure, e.g. a tree, is
transferable into existence of multi-outcome (pure) Nash equilibrium over the
same game structure. The equilibrium-transfer theorem requires cardinal or
order-theoretic conditions on the strategy sets and the preferences,
respectively, whereas counter-examples show that every requirement is relevant,
albeit possibly improvable. When the outcomes are finitely many, the proof
provides an algorithm computing a Nash equilibrium without significant
complexity loss compared to the two-outcome case. As examples of application,
this article generalises Borel determinacy, positional determinacy of parity
games, and finite-memory determinacy of Muller games
The Complexity of Nash Equilibria in Limit-Average Games
We study the computational complexity of Nash equilibria in concurrent games
with limit-average objectives. In particular, we prove that the existence of a
Nash equilibrium in randomised strategies is undecidable, while the existence
of a Nash equilibrium in pure strategies is decidable, even if we put a
constraint on the payoff of the equilibrium. Our undecidability result holds
even for a restricted class of concurrent games, where nonzero rewards occur
only on terminal states. Moreover, we show that the constrained existence
problem is undecidable not only for concurrent games but for turn-based games
with the same restriction on rewards. Finally, we prove that the constrained
existence problem for Nash equilibria in (pure or randomised) stationary
strategies is decidable and analyse its complexity.Comment: 34 page
Bounding Rationality by Discounting Time
Consider a game where Alice generates an integer and Bob wins if he can
factor that integer. Traditional game theory tells us that Bob will always win
this game even though in practice Alice will win given our usual assumptions
about the hardness of factoring.
We define a new notion of bounded rationality, where the payoffs of players
are discounted by the computation time they take to produce their actions. We
use this notion to give a direct correspondence between the existence of
equilibria where Alice has a winning strategy and the hardness of factoring.
Namely, under a natural assumption on the discount rates, there is an
equilibriumwhere Alice has a winning strategy iff there is a linear-time
samplable distribution with respect to which Factoring is hard on average.
We also give general results for discounted games over countable action
spaces, including showing that any game with bounded and computable payoffs has
an equilibrium in our model, even if each player is allowed a countable number
of actions. It follows, for example, that the Largest Integer game has an
equilibrium in our model though it has no Nash equilibria or epsilon-Nash
equilibria.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of The First Symposium on Innovations in
Computer Scienc
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