On participation games with complete information

We analyze a class of two-candidate voter participation games under complete information that encompasses as special cases certain public good provision games. We characterize the Nash equilibria of these games as stationary points of a non-linear programming problem, the objective function of which is a Morse function (onethat does not admit degenerate critical points) for almost all costs of participation. We use this fact to establish that, outside a closed set of measure zero of participation costs, all equilibria of these games are regular (an alternative to the result of De Sinopoli and Iannantuoni in Econ Theory 25(2):477–486, 2005). One consequence of regularity is that the equilibria of these games are robust to the introduction of (mild) incomplete information. Finally, we establish the existence of monotone Nash equilibria, such that players with higher participation cost abstain with (weakly) higher probability.      

On almost complete intersections

Let R be a local ring such that R=S/I where S is a regular local ring and I is a prime ideal of height r. In this paper it is shown that if I is minimally generated by r+1 elements, then there exists an R-homomorphism : K_RR^r+1 such that is an injection and R^r+1/(K_R)I/I² where K_R:=Ext _S ^r (R,S) the canonical module of R. Moreover, in case where S is a locality over a perfect field k, it is also shown that if R is Cohen-Macaulay and I² is a primary ideal, then the homological dimension of the differential module _R/k is infinite.The author wishes to thank his colleague Mr.Y.Aoyama for valuable discussions in connection with this subject.     

On nash equilibrium solutions in nonzero-sum stochastic games with complete information

Two-person nonzero-sum stochastic games with complete information are considered. It is shown that it is sufficient to search the equilibrium solutions in a class of deterministic strategy pairs — the so-calledintimidation strategy pairs. Furthermore, properties of the set of all equilibrium losses of such strategy pairs are proved.     

On finding curb sets in extensive games

We characterize strategy sets that are closed under rational behavior (curb) in extensive games of perfect information and finite horizon. It is shown that any such game possesses only one minimal curb set, which necessarily includes all its subgame perfect Nash equilibria. Applications of this result are twofold. First, it lessens computational burden while computing minimal curb sets. Second, it implies that the profile of subgame perfect equilibrium strategies is always stochastically stable in a certain class of games.I am grateful to J. Kamphorst, G. van der Laan and X. Tieman, who commented on the earlier versions of the paper. I also thank an anonymous referee and an associate editor for their helpful remarks. The usual disclaimer applies.     

On Pareto equilibria in vector-valued extensive form games

In this paper we investigate the existence of Pareto equilibria in vector-valued extensive form games. In particular we show that every vector-valued extensive form game with perfect information has at least one subgame perfect Pareto equilibrium in pure strategies. If one tries to prove this and develop a vector-valued backward induction procedure in analogy to the real-valued one, one sees that different effects may occur which thus have to be taken into account: First, suppose the deciding player at a nonterminal node makes a choice such that the equilibrium payoff vector of the subgame he would enter is undominated under the equilibrium payoff vectors of the other subgames he might enter. Then this choice need not to lead to a Pareto equilibrium. Second, suppose at a nonterminal node a chance move may arise. The combination of the Pareto equilibria of the subgames to give a strategy combination of the entire game need not be a Pareto equilibrium of the entire game.     

Generalized correlated equilibrium for two-person games in extensive form with perfect information

A correlation scheme (leading to a special equilibrium called “soft” correlated equilibrium) is applied for two-person finite games in extensive form with perfect information. Randomization by an umpire takes place over the leaves of the game tree. At every decision point players have the choice either to follow the recommendation of the umpire blindly or freely choose any other action except the one suggested. This scheme can lead to Pareto-improved outcomes of other correlated equilibria. Computational issues of maximizing a linear function over the set of soft correlated equilibria are considered and a linear-time algorithm in terms of the number of edges in the game tree is given for a special procedure called “subgame perfect optimization”.     

On toric varieties which are almost set-theoretic complete intersections

We describe a class of affine toric varieties V that are set-theoretically minimally defined by binomial equations over fields of any characteristic.     

On the non-existence of a rationality definition for extensive games

Standard solution concepts, like subgame perfection, implicitly require that players will continue to assume everybody is rational even if this has been revealed to be false by virtue of having reached a node that could not have been reached had all players behaved rationally. Several attempts have been made in the literature to solve this problem. The present paper shows that the problem is insoluble.     

Recall in extensive form games

This paper considers characterizations of perfect recall in extensive form games. It is shown that perfect recall can be expressed in terms of choices without any reference to infomation sets. When information sets are taken into account, it is decomposable into an ordering of information sets and that players do not forget what they knew nor what they did. Thus, if information sets are partially ordered, then perfect recall is implied by the player's inability to refine her information from the memory. Received: August 1997/final version: September 1998     

Lexicographic domination in extensive games

We extend a notion of a lexicographic domination between strategies, introduced for normal form games in Okada (1988), to extensive games via the transformation from the extensive form to the agent normal form. It is shown that lexicographically undominatedness implies subgame perfection of an equilibrium point in extensive games with perfect recall.I am grateful to an anonymous referee for very helpful comments and suggestions. A preliminary draft of this paper was written while I was visiting the MEDS Department of Northwestern University in 1986–87. The warm hospitality of that department is gratefully acknowledged.     

On repeated games with general information function

For a class of repeated two-person zero-sum games with incomplete information it was proved byAumann andMaschler that limν _n exists,ν _n being the value of the game withn repetitions. If the players know at each stage the moves done by both players at all previous stages,Aumann andMaschler could prove that the error termδ _n=¦ν _n — limν _n ¦ satisfiesδ _n≤c/√n for somec>0. It was then shown byZamir that this bound is the lowest possible. In this paper it is shown that if previous moves are not always announced,δ _n may be of higher order of magnitude e.g.δ _n≥c/n ^1/3 for somec>0. New upper bounds forδ _n are given for two classes of games.     

On the core of information graph games

This paper considers a subclass of minimum cost spanning tree games, called information graph games. It is proved that the core of these games can be described by a set of at most 2n — 1 linear constraints, wheren is the number of players. Furthermore, it is proved that each information graph game has an associated concave information graph game, which has the same core as the original game. Consequently, the set of extreme core allocations of an information graph game is characterized as the set of marginal allocation vectors of its associated concave game. Finally, it is proved that all extreme core allocations of an information graph game are marginal allocation vectors of the game itself, though not all marginal allocation vectors need to be core allocations.     

On almost revlex ideals with Hilbert function of complete intersections

Ricerche di Matematica - In this paper, we investigate the behavior of almost reverse lexicographic ideals with the Hilbert function of a complete intersection. More precisely, over a field K, we...     

Player splitting in extensive form games

By a player splitting we mean a mechanism that distributes the information sets of a player among so-called agents. A player splitting is called independent if each path in the game tree contains at most one agent of every player. Following Mertens (1989), a solution is said to have the player splitting property if, roughly speaking, the solution of an extensive form game does not change by applying independent player splittings. We show that Nash equilibria, perfect equilibria, Kohlberg-Mertens stable sets and Mertens stable sets have the player splitting property. An example is given to show that the proper equilibrium concept does not satisfy the player splitting property. Next, we give a definition of invariance under (general) player splittings which is an extension of the player splitting property to the situation where we also allow for dependent player splittings. We come to the conclusion that, for any given dependent player splitting, each of the above solutions is not invariant under this player splitting. The results are used to give several characterizations of the class of independent player splittings and the class of single appearance structures by means of invariance of solution concepts under player splittings. Received: December 1996/Revised Version: January 2000     

On Nash equilibrium points and games of imperfect information

This paper considers a class of two-player, nonzero-sum games in which the players have only local, as opposed to global, information about the payoff functions. We study various modes of behavior and their relationship to different stability properties of the Nash equilibrium points.     

Simplification of games in extensive form

Thevon Neumann-Morgenstern normal form of a game is conceptually and theoretically useful, but in practice leads to enormous matrix games. We discuss new methods of simplifying games in extensive form that should be useful for solving actual games. The first method is that of partially normalizing the game at an information set and, if dominations are found, making local “negative” decisions not to choose certain alternatives at the information set. Coupled with this idea is the reduction operation which eliminates parts of the game tree. These methods are shown to be powerful enough to eliminate all dominations in the strategy matrix, where we consider domination in three senses.     

Almost strict competitiveness in extensive games

We consider an extension of an almost strictly competitive game, introduced by Aumann (1961), inn-person extensive games by incorporating Selten's subgame perfection. We call it a subgame perfect weakly-almost (SPWA) strictly competitive game, in particular, an SPWA strictly competitive game in strategic form is simply called a WA strictly competitive game. We give some general results on the structure of this class of games. One result gives an easy way to verify almost strict competitiveness of a given extensive game. We show that a two-person weakly unilaterally competitive extensive game, introduced by Kats and Thisse (1992) for normal form games, is SPWA strictly competitive. We remark that some of our main results for SPWA strictly competitive games do not hold for the modification of almost strict competitiveness with trembling-hand perfection.The author is indebted to Mamoru Kaneko for valuable discussions, comments and criticism throughout the paper. He thanks N. Bose, M. Frascatore, R. Gilles, H. Haller, A. Kats, J. Kline and an anonymous referee for helpful comments on earlier drafts. The usual disclaimer applies.