Denumerable state stochastic games with limiting average payoff

We study stochastic games with countable state space, compact action spaces, and limiting average payoff. ForN-person games, the existence of an equilibrium in stationary strategies is established under a certain Liapunov stability condition. For two-person zero-sum games, the existence of a value and optimal strategies for both players are established under the same stability condition.The authors wish to thank Prof. T. Parthasarathy for pointing out an error in an earlier version of this paper. M. K. Ghosh wishes to thank Prof. A. Arapostathis and Prof. S. I. Marcus for their hospitality and support.     

Stationary strategies in topological games

We prove general theorems on the existence of stationery strategies (i.e., strategies depending only on the opponent's last move) in certain infinite positional games of perfect information and we derive some consequences for various topological games.     

N-person differential games governed by infinite-dimensional systems

This paper discussesN-person differential games governed by infinite-dimensional systems. The minimax principle, which is a necessary condition for the existence of open-loop equilibrium strategies, is proved. For linear-quadraticN-person differential games, global necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of open-loop and closed-loop equilibrium strategies are derived.This work was supported by the Science Fund of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Research Foundation of Purdue University.The problems discussed in this paper were proposed by Professor G. Chen, during the author's visit to Pensylvania State University, and were completed at Purdue University. The author would like to thank Professors L. D. Berkovitz and G. Chen for their hospitality.     

Zero-sum risk-sensitive stochastic games on a countable state space

Infinite horizon discounted-cost and ergodic-cost risk-sensitive zero-sum stochastic games for controlled Markov chains with countably many states are analyzed. Upper and lower values for these games are established. The existence of value and saddle-point equilibria in the class of Markov strategies is proved for the discounted-cost game. The existence of value and saddle-point equilibria in the class of stationary strategies is proved under the uniform ergodicity condition for the ergodic-cost game. The value of the ergodic-cost game happens to be the product of the inverse of the risk-sensitivity factor and the logarithm of the common Perron–Frobenius eigenvalue of the associated controlled nonlinear kernels.     

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.     

Characterization of optimal strategies in matrix games with convexity properties

This paper gives a full characterization of matrices with rows and columns having properties closely related to the (quasi-) convexity-concavity of functions. The matrix games described by such payoff matrices well approximate continuous games on the unit square with payoff functions F (x, y) concave in x for each y, and convex in y for each x. It is shown that the optimal strategies in such matrix games have a very simple structure and a search-procedure is given. The results have a very close relationship with the known theorem of Debreu and Glicksberg about the existence of a pure Nash equilibrium in n-person games. Received: May 1997/Final version: August 1999     

Stochastic Games with Average Payoff Criterion

We study two-person stochastic games on a Polish state and compact action spaces and with average payoff criterion under a certain ergodicity condition. For the zero-sum game we establish the existence of a value and stationary optimal strategies for both players. For the nonzero-sum case the existence of Nash equilibrium in stationary strategies is established under certain separability conditions. Accepted 9 January 1997     

Tarski's Fixpoint Lemma and combinatorial games

Using Tarski's Fixpoint Lemma for order preserving maps of a complete lattice into itself, a new, lattice theoretic proof is given for the existence of persistent strategies for combinatorial games as well as for games with a topological tolerance and games on lattices. Further, the existence of winning strategies is obtained for games on superalgebraic lattices, which includes the case of ordinary combinatorial games. Finally, a basic representation theorem is presented for those lattices.     

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.     

Pareto equilibria for generalized constrained multiobjective games in FC-spaces without local convexity structure

In this paper, we further study a class of generalized constrained multiobjective games where the number of players may be finite or infinite, the strategy sets may be general FC-spaces without local convexity structure, and all payoff functions get their values in infinite-dimensional topological vector spaces. By using an existence theorem of maximal elements for a family of set-valued mappings in FC-spaces due to the author, an existence theorem of solutions for a system of generalized vector quasivariational inclusions is first proved in general FC-spaces. By applying the existence result of solutions of the system of generalized vector quasivariational inclusions, some existence theorems of (weak) Pareto equilibria for the generalized constrained multiobjective games are established in noncompact product FC-spaces. Some special cases of our results are also discussed. Our results are new and different from the corresponding known results in the literature.     

Nonempty Intersection Theorems and Generalized Multi-objective Games in Product <Emphasis Type="Italic">FC</Emphasis>-Spaces

A new class of generalized multi-objective games is introduced and studied in FC-spaces where the number of players may be finite or infinite, and all payoff are all set-valued mappings and get their values in a topological space. By using an existence theorems of maximal elements for a family of set-valued mappings in product FC-spaces due to author, some new nonempty intersection theorems for a family of set-valued mappings are first proved in FC-spaces. As applications, some existence theorems of weak Pareto equilibria for the generalized multi-objective games are established in noncompact FC-spaces. These theorems improve, unify and generalize the corresponding results in recent literatures.     

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.     

On pure conjectural equilibrium with non-manipulable information

An information structure in a non-cooperative game determines the signal that each player observes as a function of the strategy profile. Such information structure is called non-manipulable if no player can gain new information by changing his strategy. A Conjectural Equilibrium (CE) (Battigalli in Unpublished undergraduate dissertation, 1987; Battigalli and Guaitoli 1988; Decisions, games and markets, 1997) with respect to a given information structure is a strategy profile in which each player plays a best response to his conjecture about his opponents’ play and his conjecture is not contradicted by the signal he observes. We provide a sufficient condition for the existence of pure CE in games with a non-manipulable information structure. We then apply this condition to prove existence of pure CE in two classes of games when the information that players have is the distribution of strategies in the population. This work is based on a chapter from my Ph.D. dissertation written at the School of Mathematical Sciences of Tel-Aviv University under the supervision of Prof. Ehud Lehrer. I am grateful to Ehud Lehrer as well as to Pierpaolo Battigalli, Yuval Heller, two anonymous referees, an Associate Editor and the Editor for very helpful comments and references.     

Linear-quadratic,two-person,zero-sum differential games: Necessary and sufficient conditions

We consider linear-quadratic, two-person, zero-sum perfect information differential games, possibly with a linear target set. We show a necessary and sufficient condition for the existence of a saddle point, within a wide class of causal strategies (including, but not restricted to, pure state feedbacks). The main result is that, when they exist, the optimal strategies are pure feedbacks, given by the classical formulas suitably extended, and that existence may be obtained even in the presence of a conjugate point within the time interval, provided it is of a special type that we calleven.The partial support of the Trieste Unit of the GNAS, Italian CNR, is gratefully acknowledged.     

Convex semi-infinite games

This paper introduces a generalization of semi-infinite games. The pure strategies for player I involve choosing one function from an infinite family of convex functions, while the set of mixed strategies for player II is a closed convex setC inR ⁿ. The minimax theorem applies under a condition which limits the directions of recession ofC. Player II always has optimal strategies. These are shown to exist for player I also if a certain infinite system verifies the property of Farkas-Minkowski. The paper also studies certain conditions that guarantee the finiteness of the value of the game and the existence of optimal pure strategies for player I.Many thanks are due to the referees for their detailed comments.     

Mean field games with controlled jump–diffusion dynamics: Existence results and an illiquid interbank market model

We study a family of mean field games with a state variable evolving as a multivariate jump–diffusion process. The jump component is driven by a Poisson process with a time-dependent intensity function. All coefficients, i.e. drift, volatility and jump size, are controlled. Under fairly general conditions, we establish existence of a solution in a relaxed version of the mean field game and give conditions under which the optimal strategies are in fact Markovian, hence extending to a jump–diffusion setting previous results established in Lacker (2015). The proofs rely upon the notions of relaxed controls and martingale problems. Finally, to complement the abstract existence results, we study a simple illiquid inter-bank market model, where the banks can change their reserves only at the jump times of some exogenous Poisson processes with a common constant intensity, and provide some numerical results.     

Stationary equilibria in cyclic games: Search and structure

The existence of optimal stationary strategies for a cyclic game played on the vertices of a bipartite graph up to the first cycle with the payoff of one player to the other equaling the sum of the maximal and minimal local payoffs on this cycle is proved. This result implies that the problem belongs to the class NP ∩ co-NP; -a polynomial algorithm that yields optimal strategies for ergodic extensions of matrix games is given. Translated fromMatematicheskie Zametki, Vol. 67, No. 6, pp. 913–921, June, 2000.     

完备L-凸度量空间中的Ky Fan匹配定理及其对抽象经济的应用

在完备L-凸度量空间中建立了一个转移紧开覆盖的Ky Fan匹配定理．作为应用，获得了Fan-Browder重合定理和极大元定理．最后，研究了完备L-凸度量空间中抽象经济和定性对策的平衡存在定理．     

Bargaining sets of cooperative games without side payments

In this paper an analogue of the bargaining setM ₁ ⁱ is defined for cooperative games without side payments. An existence theorem is proved for games of pairs, while it is shown by an example that no general existence theorem holds.