22,751 research outputs found
Is Having a Unique Equilibrium Robust?
We investigate whether having a unique equilibrium (or a given number of
equilibria) is robust to perturbation of the payoffs, both for Nash equilibrium
and correlated equilibrium. We show that the set of n-player finite games with
a unique correlated equilibrium is open, while this is not true of Nash
equilibrium for n>2. The crucial lemma is that a unique correlated equilibrium
is a quasi-strict Nash equilibrium. Related results are studied. For instance,
we show that generic two-person zero-sum games have a unique correlated
equilibrium and that, while the set of symmetric bimatrix games with a unique
symmetric Nash equilibrium is not open, the set of symmetric bimatrix games
with a unique and quasi-strict symmetric Nash equilibrium is
Nash Equilibria in the Response Strategy of Correlated Games
In nature and society problems arise when different interests are difficult
to reconcile, which are modeled in game theory. While most applications assume
uncorrelated games, a more detailed modeling is necessary to consider the
correlations that influence the decisions of the players. The current theory
for correlated games, however, enforces the players to obey the instructions
from a third party or "correlation device" to reach equilibrium, but this
cannot be achieved for all initial correlations. We extend here the existing
framework of correlated games and find that there are other interesting and
previously unknown Nash equilibria that make use of correlations to obtain the
best payoff. This is achieved by allowing the players the freedom to follow or
not to follow the suggestions of the correlation device. By assigning
independent probabilities to follow every possible suggestion, the players
engage in a response game that turns out to have a rich structure of Nash
equilibria that goes beyond the correlated equilibrium and mixed-strategy
solutions. We determine the Nash equilibria for all possible correlated
Snowdrift games, which we find to be describable by Ising Models in thermal
equilibrium. We believe that our approach paves the way to a study of
correlations in games that uncovers the existence of interesting underlying
interaction mechanisms, without compromising the independence of the players
On the Hardness of Signaling
There has been a recent surge of interest in the role of information in
strategic interactions. Much of this work seeks to understand how the realized
equilibrium of a game is influenced by uncertainty in the environment and the
information available to players in the game. Lurking beneath this literature
is a fundamental, yet largely unexplored, algorithmic question: how should a
"market maker" who is privy to additional information, and equipped with a
specified objective, inform the players in the game? This is an informational
analogue of the mechanism design question, and views the information structure
of a game as a mathematical object to be designed, rather than an exogenous
variable.
We initiate a complexity-theoretic examination of the design of optimal
information structures in general Bayesian games, a task often referred to as
signaling. We focus on one of the simplest instantiations of the signaling
question: Bayesian zero-sum games, and a principal who must choose an
information structure maximizing the equilibrium payoff of one of the players.
In this setting, we show that optimal signaling is computationally intractable,
and in some cases hard to approximate, assuming that it is hard to recover a
planted clique from an Erdos-Renyi random graph. This is despite the fact that
equilibria in these games are computable in polynomial time, and therefore
suggests that the hardness of optimal signaling is a distinct phenomenon from
the hardness of equilibrium computation. Necessitated by the non-local nature
of information structures, en-route to our results we prove an "amplification
lemma" for the planted clique problem which may be of independent interest
Correlated Equilibria in Competitive Staff Selection Problem
This paper deals with an extension of the concept of correlated strategies to
Markov stopping games. The Nash equilibrium approach to solving nonzero-sum
stopping games may give multiple solutions. An arbitrator can suggest to each
player the decision to be applied at each stage based on a joint distribution
over the players' decisions. This is a form of equilibrium selection. Examples
of correlated equilibria in nonzero-sum games related to the staff selection
competition in the case of two departments are given. Utilitarian, egalitarian,
republican and libertarian concepts of correlated equilibria selection are
used.Comment: The idea of this paper was presented at Game Theory and Mathematical
Economics, International Conference in Memory of Jerzy Los(1920 - 1998),
Warsaw, September 200
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