Stochastic evolution of rules for playing normal form games

The evolution of boundedly rational rules for playing normal form games is studied within stationary environments of stochastically changing games. Rules are viewed as algorithms prescribing strategies for the different normal form games that arise. It is shown that many of the folk results of evolutionary game theory typically obtained with a fixed game and fixed strategies carry over to the present case. The results are also related to recent experiments on rules and games.Rules, evolutionary dynamics, stochastic dynamics, bounded rationality, learning, normal form games

Equal rules or equal opportunities? Demystifying level playing field

Pleas for a level playing field, for instance in international trade, are often not well-founded. This is because it is not exactly clear what a 'level playing field' means. But even if it would be clear what the plea would imply, a level playing field is not always desirable from an economic perspective. To clarify the meaning of 'a level playing field' we introduce two specifications of the concept. First, a rules-based level playing field, which means that all firms in a market are treated the same in equal circumstances with regard to legislation, taxes, subsidies etcetera. Second, an outcome-based level playing field, which means that all firms in a market have the same expected profit. This means that, in case firms are heterogeneous, the government compensates the disadvantaged firms (for instance with subsidies). The first conclusion in the report is that a rules-based level playing field is desirable, although there are reasons to deviate from this assumption. The second conclusion is that it is never desirable to pursue a fully outcome-based level playing field, but that it may be desirable to level the playing field to a certain extent in the case of market failure. In case of market failure it is preferable to use symmetric rules (equal for all firms), in stead of asymmetric rules (favouring some firms). The report introduces a framework with questions that can help policymakers analyse level playing field issues. The framework makes clear that in general one cannot tell�whether a plea for a 'level playing field' is justified or not. It is necessary to focus on the policy issues hidden behind the plea, i.e. policy issues concerning market failure, dynamic efficiency, redistribution of income and differences in preferences between countries.

Automated synthesis of mobile game environments and rulesets using a hybridized interactive evolutionary programming approach

By hybridizing Evolutionary Programming (EP) with Interactive Evolutionary Algorithm (IEA), game rules and its playing environment will be automatically generated for an arcade-type game that can be played on the Android mobile platform. In this study, mutation rates of 0.7 and 0.9 are used to generate both the game rules and the game environment for the mobile game. Players are used as the evaluator instead of the conventional mathematical fitness functions and hence the motivation for using high mutation rate is that they are able to generate higher levels of diversity during the optimization runs. This interactive mode of game-playing cum evaluation will enable the creation of games that can fit the user’s preferences as well as styles of game-playing. Experiments show a very positive result where very good evaluation scores were obtained from the users. This shows that with a high mutation rate, the hybridized EP with IEA approach can generate rules and environments that are well-accepted and liked by human players