Population uncertainty and Poisson games

A general class of models is developed for analyzing games with population uncertainty. Within this general class, a special class of Poisson games is defined. It is shown that Poisson games are uniquely characterized by properties of independent actions and environmental equivalence. The general definition of equilibrium for games with population uncertainty is formulated, and it is shown that the equilibria of Poisson games are invariant under payoff-irrelevant type splitting. An example of a large voting game is discussed, to illustrate the advantages of using a Poisson game model for large games. Received December 1995/Revised version July 1997