Multicriteria games and potentials

In this note we study how far the theory of strategic games with potentials, as reported by Monderer and Shapley (Games Econ Behav 14:124–143, 1996), can be extended to strategic games with vector payoffs, as reported by Shapley (Nav Res Logist Q 6:57–61, 1959). The problem of the existence of pure approximate Pareto equilibria for multicriteria potential games is also studied.      

Optimal strategic reasoning with McNaughton functions

The aim of the paper is to explore strategic reasoning in strategic games of two players with an uncountably infinite space of strategies the payoff of which is given by McNaughton functions—functions on the unit interval which are piecewise linear with integer coefficients. McNaughton functions are of a special interest for approximate reasoning as they correspond to formulas of infinitely valued Lukasiewicz logic. The paper is focused on existence and structure of Nash equilibria and algorithms for their computation. Although the existence of mixed strategy equilibria follows from a general theorem (Glicksberg, 1952) [5], nothing is known about their structure neither the theorem provides any method for computing them. The central problem of the article is to characterize the class of strategic games with McNaughton payoffs which have a finitely supported Nash equilibrium. We give a sufficient condition for finite equilibria and we propose an algorithm for recovering the corresponding equilibrium strategies. Our result easily generalizes to n-player strategic games which don't need to be strictly competitive with a payoff functions represented by piecewise linear functions with real coefficients. Our conjecture is that every game with McNaughton payoff allows for finitely supported equilibrium strategies, however we leave proving/disproving of this conjecture for future investigations.     

Separable and low-rank continuous games

In this paper, we study nonzero-sum separable games, which are continuous games whose payoffs take a sum-of-products form. Included in this subclass are all finite games and polynomial games. We investigate the structure of equilibria in separable games. We show that these games admit finitely supported Nash equilibria. Motivated by the bounds on the supports of mixed equilibria in two-player finite games in terms of the ranks of the payoff matrices, we define the notion of the rank of an n-player continuous game and use this to provide bounds on the cardinality of the support of equilibrium strategies. We present a general characterization theorem that states that a continuous game has finite rank if and only if it is separable. Using our rank results, we present an efficient algorithm for computing approximate equilibria of two-player separable games with fixed strategy spaces in time polynomial in the rank of the game. This research was funded in part by National Science Foundation grants DMI-0545910 and ECCS-0621922 and AFOSR MURI subaward 2003-07688-1.     

On the probability of existence of pure equilibria in matrix games

We examine the probability that a randomly chosen matrix game admits pure equilibria and its behavior as the number of actions of the players or the number of players increases. We show that, for zero-sum games, the probability of having pure equilibria goes to zero as the number of actions goes to infinity, but it goes to a nonzero constant for a two-player game. For many-player games, if the number of players goes to infinity, the probability of existence of pure equilibria goes to zero even if the number of actions does not go to infinity.This research was supported in part by NSF Grant CCR-92-22734.     

Perfect equilibria in stochastic games

We examine stochastic games with finite state and action spaces. For the -discounted case, as well as for the irreducible limiting average case, we show the existence of trembling-hand perfect equilibria and give characterizations of those equilibria. In the final section, we give an example which illustrates that the existence of stationary limiting average equilibria in a nonirreducible stochastic game does not imply the existence of a perfect limiting average equilibrium.Support was provided by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research NWO via the Netherlands Foundation for Mathematics SMC, Project 10-64-10.     

An ordinal well-posedness property for Nash equilibria

The aim of this article is to give, for Nash equilibria, a well-posedness criterion in the form of an ordinal property. This property is important for games because it captures the case when players' decisions depend on preferences and not on a special choice of a utility function. The ordinal characteristics of this well-posedness criterion comes from considering value-bounded approximate equilibria.     

非合作博弈的轻微利他平衡点的存在性

在Marco和Morgan提出博弈论中一种新的解——轻微利他平衡的基础上,讨论了一类不连续博弈的轻微利他平衡点的存在性,进一步讨论了支付函数更弱情况(拟凹)的轻微利他平衡点的存在性.     

Infinite Player Noncooperative Games with Vector Payoffs Under Relative Pseudomonotonicity

In this paper we consider the Nash equilibrium problem for infinite player games with vector payoffs in a topological vector space setting. By employing new concepts of relative (pseudo)monotonicity, we establish several existence results of solutions for usual and normalized vector equilibria. The results strengthen existence results for vector equilibrium problems, which were based on classical pseudomonotonicity concepts. They also extend previous results for vector variational inequalities and finite player games under relative (pseudo)monotonicity.     

Probabilities of Pure Nash Equilibria in Matrix Games when the Payoff Entries of One Player Are Randomly Selected

The Nash equilibrium in pure strategies represents an important solution concept in nonzero sum matrix games. Existence of Nash equilibria in games with known and with randomly selected payoff entries have been studied extensively. In many real games, however, a player may know his own payoff entries but not the payoff entries of the other player. In this paper, we consider nonzero sum matrix games where the payoff entries of one player are known, but the payoff entries of the other player are assumed to be randomly selected. We are interested in determining the probabilities of existence of pure Nash equilibria in such games. We characterize these probabilities by first determining the finite space of ordinal matrix games that corresponds to the infinite space of matrix games with random entries for only one player. We then partition this space into mutually exclusive spaces that correspond to games with no Nash equilibria and with r Nash equilibria. In order to effectively compute the sizes of these spaces, we introduce the concept of top-rated preferences minimal ordinal games. We then present a theorem which provides a mechanism for computing the number of games in each of these mutually exclusive spaces, which then can be used to determine the probabilities. Finally, we summarize the results by deriving the probabilities of existence of unique, nonunique, and no Nash equilibria, and we present an illustrative example.     

n人非合作博弈的轻微利他平衡点

对一类不连续的博弈证明了轻微利他平衡点存在且对这些不连续博弈,如果本质平衡点存在,则他们必是轻微利他平衡点,进而证明了大多数博弈(在Baire分类意义上)是轻微利他的,即它的所有平衡点都是轻微利他的.