Slightly Altruistic Equilibria

We introduce a refinement concept for Nash equilibria (slightly altruistic equilibrium) defined by a limit process and which captures the idea of reciprocal altruism as presented in Binmore (Proceedings of the XV Italian Meeting on Game Theory and Applications, 2003]). Existence is guaranteed for every finite game and for a large class of games with a continuum of strategies. Results and examples emphasize the (lack of) connections with classical refinement concepts. Finally, it is shown that, under a pseudomonotonicity assumption on a particular operator associated to the game, it is possible, by selecting slightly altruistic equilibria, to eliminate those equilibria in which a player can switch to a strategy that is better for the others without leaving the set of equilibria. Part of the results in this paper have been presented at: First Spain, Italy, Netherlands Meeting on Game Theory, Maastricht, 2005; Fifth International ISDG Workshop, Segovia, 2005; GATE, Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2005; XXX AMASES Workshop, Trieste 2006; CSEF, Università di Salerno, 2006.