Mixed strategy solutions forN-person quadratic games

Mixed strategy -equilibrium points are given forN-person games with cost functions consisting of quadratic, bilinear, and linear terms and strategy spaces consisting of closed balls in Hilbert spaces. The results are applied to linear-quadratic differential games with no information and quadratic integral constraints on the control functions.This work was supported by a Commonwealth of Australia, Postgraduate Research Award.     

On the existence of almost-pure-strategy Nash equilibrium in <Emphasis Type="Italic">n</Emphasis>-person finite games

This paper gives wide characterization of n-person non-coalitional games with finite players’ strategy spaces and payoff functions having some concavity or convexity properties. The characterization is done in terms of the existence of two-point-strategy Nash equilibria, that is equilibria consisting only of mixed strategies with supports being one or two-point sets of players’ pure strategy spaces. The structure of such simple equilibria is discussed in different cases. The results obtained in the paper can be seen as a discrete counterpart of Glicksberg’s theorem and other known results about the existence of pure (or “almost pure”) Nash equilibria in continuous concave (convex) games with compact convex spaces of players’ pure strategies.     

Performance versus informativeness in linear-quadratic Gaussian noncooperative games

In this paper, we study the impact of informativeness on the performance of linear quadratic Gaussian Nash and Stackelberg games. We first show that, in two-person static Nash games, if one of the players acquires more information, then this extra information is beneficial to him, provided that it is orthogonal to both players' information. A special case is that when one of the players is informationally stronger than the other, then any new information is beneficial to him. We then show that a similar result holds for dynamic Nash games. In the dynamic games, the players use strategies that are linear functions of the current estimates of the state, generated by two Kalman filters. The same properties are proved to hold in static and feedback Stackelberg games as well.This work was partially supported by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Grant No. AFOSR-82-0174.     

Multicriteria Goal Games

In this paper, we deal with multicriteria matrix games. Different solution concepts have been proposed to cope with these games. Recently, the concept of Pareto-optimal security strategy which assures the property of security in the individual criteria against an opponent's deviation in strategy has been introduced. However, the idea of security behind this concept is based on expected values, so that this security might be violated by mixed strategies when replications are not allowed. To avoid this inconvenience, we propose in this paper a new concept of solution for these games: the G-goal security strategy, which includes as part of the solution the probability of obtaining prespecified values in the payoff functions. Thus, attitude toward risk together with payoff values are considered jointly in the solution analysis.     

Reductions of interval noncooperative games

Noncooperative games of a finite number of persons with interval-valued payoff functions are considered. The concept of an equilibrium situation is introduced. A reduction of such games to deterministic noncooperative games is proposed. Properties of the reduced games are discussed. Interval antagonistic and bimatrix games are examined, and illustrative examples are considered.     

Stackelberg strategies in linear-quadratic stochastic differential games

This paper obtains the Stackelberg solution to a class of two-player stochastic differential games described by linear state dynamics and quadratic objective functionals. The information structure of the problem is such that the players make independent noisy measurements of the initial state and are permitted to utilize only this information in constructing their controls. Furthermore, by the very nature of the Stackelberg solution concept, one of the players is assumed to know, in advance, the strategy of the other player (the leader). For this class of problems, we first establish existence and uniqueness of the Stackelberg solution and then relate the derivation of the leader's Stackelberg solution to the optimal solution of a nonstandard stochastic control problem. This stochastic control problem is solved in a more general context, and its solution is utilized in constructing the Stackelberg strategy of the leader. For the special case Gaussian statistics, it is shown that this optimal strategy is affine in observation of the leader. The paper also discusses numerical aspects of the Stackelberg solution under general statistics and develops algorithms which converge to the unique Stackelberg solution.This work was performed while the second author was on sabbatical leave at the Department of Applied Mathematics, Twente University of Technology, Enschede, Holland.     

Polytope Games

Starting from the definition of a bimatrix game, we restrict the pair of strategy sets jointly, not independently. Thus, we have a set , which is the set of all feasible strategy pairs. We pose the question of whether a Nash equilibrium exists, in that no player can obtain a higher payoff by deviating. We answer this question affirmatively for a very general case, imposing a minimum of conditions on the restricted sets and the payoff. Next, we concentrate on a special class of restricted games, the polytope bimatrix game, where the restrictions are linear and the payoff functions are bilinear. Further, we show how the polytope bimatrix game is a generalization of the bimatrix game. We give an algorithm for solving such a polytope bimatrix game; finally, we discuss refinements to the equilibrium point concept where we generalize results from the theory of bimatrix games.     

A reference case for mean field games models

In this article, we present a reference case of mean field games. This case can be seen as a reference for two main reasons. First, the case is simple enough to allow for explicit resolution: Bellman functions are quadratic, stationary measures are normal and stability can be dealt with explicitly using Hermite polynomials. Second, in spite of its simplicity, the case is rich enough in terms of mathematics to be generalized and to inspire the study of more complex models that may not be as tractable as this one.     

On the Tikhonov Well-Posedness of Concave Games and Cournot Oligopoly Games

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether theorems known to guarantee the existence and uniqueness of Nash equilibria, provide also sufficient conditions for the Tikhonov well-posedness (T-wp). We consider several hypotheses that ensure the existence and uniqueness of a Nash equilibrium (NE), such as strong positivity of the Jacobian of the utility function derivatives (Ref. 1), pseudoconcavity, and strict diagonal dominance of the Jacobian of the best reply functions in implicit form (Ref. 2). The aforesaid assumptions imply the existence and uniqueness of NE. We show that the hypotheses in Ref. 2 guarantee also the T-wp property of the Nash equilibrium.As far as the hypotheses in Ref. 1 are concerned, the result is true for quadratic games and zero-sum games. A standard way to prove the T-wp property is to show that the sets of -equilibria are compact. This last approach is used to demonstrate directly the T-wp property for the Cournot oligopoly model given in Ref. 3. The compactness of -equilibria is related also to the condition that the best reply surfaces do not approach each other near infinity.     

Proper belief revision and rationalizability in dynamic games

In this paper we develop an epistemic model for dynamic games in which players may revise their beliefs about the opponents’ utility functions as the game proceeds. Within this framework, we propose a rationalizability concept that is based upon the following three principles: (1) at every instance of the game, a player should believe that his opponents are carrying out optimal strategies, (2) a player, at information set h, should not change his belief about an opponent’s relative ranking of two strategies s and s′ if both s and s′ could have led to h, and (3) the players’ initial beliefs about the opponents’ utility functions should agree on a given profile u of utility functions. Common belief in these events leads to the concept of persistent rationalizability for the profile u of utility functions. It is shown that for a given game tree with observable deviators and a given profile u of utility functions, every properly point-rationalizable strategy is a persistently rationalizable strategy for u. This result implies that persistently rationalizable strategies always exist for all game trees with observable deviators and all profiles of utility functions. We provide an algorithm that can be used to compute the set of persistently rationalizable strategies for a given profile u of utility functions. For generic games with perfect information, persistent rationalizability uniquely selects the backward induction strategy for every player.     

Repeated Games with Bonuses

This paper deals with 2-player zero-sum repeated games in which player 1 receives a bonus at stage t if he repeats the action he played at stage t−1. We investigate the optimality of simple strategies for player 1. A simple strategy for player 1 consists of playing the same mixed action at every stage, irrespective of past play. Furthermore, for games in which player 1 has a simple optimal strategy, we characterize the set of stationary optimal strategies for player 2.     

Existence of optimal strategies in Markov games with incomplete information

The existence of a value and optimal strategies is proved for the class of two-person repeated games where the state follows a Markov chain independently of players’ actions and at the beginning of each stage only Player 1 is informed about the state. The results apply to the case of standard signaling where players’ stage actions are observable, as well as to the model with general signals provided that Player 1 has a nonrevealing repeated game strategy. The proofs reduce the analysis of these repeated games to that of classical repeated games with incomplete information on one side. This research was supported in part by Israeli Science Foundation grants 382/98, 263/03, and 1123/06, and by the Zvi Hermann Shapira Research Fund.     

A note on two-person zero-sum communicating stochastic games

For undiscounted two-person zero-sum communicating stochastic games with finite state and action spaces, a solution procedure is proposed that exploits the communication property, i.e., working with irreducible games over restricted strategy spaces. The proposed procedure gives the value of the communicating game with an arbitrarily small error when the value is independent of the initial state.     

Nash and Stackelberg Differential Games

A large class of stochastic differential games for several players is considered in this paper.The class includes Nash differential games as well as Stackelberg differential games.A mix is possible.The...     

大博弈中Nash均衡的存在性

研究了具有任意多个局中人的非合作博弈(大博弈)中Nash均衡的存在性.将1969年Ma的截口定理推广得到新的截口定理.用这个新的截口定理进一步证明了:1)大博弈中Nash均衡的存在性;2)纯策略集为紧度量空间而且支付函数为连续函数时,连续大博弈中混合策略Nash均衡的存在性.并且存在性定理推出了2010年Salonen的结果,即此研究结果较Salonen的结论更具普遍意义.     

Games played by Boole and Galois

We define an infinite class of 2-pile subtraction games, where the amount that can be subtracted from both piles simultaneously is an extended Boolean function f of the size of the piles, or a function over GF(2). Wythoff's game is a special case. For each game, the second player winning positions are a pair of complementary sequences. Sample games are presented, strategy complexity questions are discussed, and possible further studies are indicated. The motivation stems from the major contributions of Professor Peter Hammer to the theory and applications of Boolean functions.     

Sufficient conditions for Nash equilibria inN-person games over reflexive Banach spaces

Sufficient conditions are obtained for the existence of Nash equilibrium points inN-person games when the strategy sets are closed, convex subsets of reflexive Banach spaces. These conditions require that each player's cost functional is convex in that player's strategy, weakly continuous in the strategies of the other players, weakly lower semicontinuous in all strategies, and furthermore satisfies a coercivity condition if any of the strategy sets is unbounded. The result is applied to a class of linear-quadratic differential games with no information, to prove that equilibrium points exist when the duration of these games is sufficiently small.This work was supported by a Commonwealth of Australia, Postgraduate Research Award.     

The not-quite non-atomic game: Non-emptiness of the core in large production games

We show that, in cooperative production games, when the production functions are not concave, the core may well be empty. However, as the number of players increases (subject to some regularity conditions), the relative deficit obtained by using concavified functions decreases to zero. Furthermore, differentiability of the functions will cause the absolute deficit to go to zero.     

Conditional Viability for Impulse Differential Games

We introduce in this paper the concept of “impulse evolutionary game”. Examples of evolutionary games are usual differential games, differentiable games with history (path-dependent differential games), mutational differential games, etc. Impulse evolutionary systems and games cover in particular “hybrid systems” as well as “qualitative systems”. The conditional viability kernel of a constrained set (with a target) is the set of initial states such that for all strategies (regarded as continuous feedbacks) played by the second player, there exists a strategy of the first player such that the associated run starting from this initial state satisfies the constraints until it hits the target. This paper characterizes the concept of conditional viability kernel for “qualitative games” and of conditional valuation function for “qualitative games” maximinimizing an intertemporal criterion. The theorems obtained so far about viability/capturability issues for evolutionary systems, conditional viability for differential games and about impulse and hybrid systems are used to provide characterizations of conditional viability under impulse evolutionary games.     

Existence of value in differential games with fixed time duration

A differential game of prescribed duration with general-type phase constraints is investigated. The existence of a value in the Varaiya-Lin sense and an optimal strategy for one of the players is obtained under assumptions ensuring that the sets of all admissible trajectories for the two players are compact in the Banach space of all continuous functions. These results are next widened on more general games, examined earlier by Varaiya.The author wishes to express his thanks to an anonymous reviewer for his many valuable comments.