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Game Theory

Intro

Strategic interactions between self-interested peoople.

Two player game. TCP Backoff

Self-interested each agent has its own description of states of the world, and acts based on this description.

utility function.

  • Quantifies degree of preference across alternatives
  • explains the impact of uncertainty
  • act to maximize expected utility

Defining Game

Players: N.

Action set: Ai.

Utility function: ui.

Examples of games

  • Zero Sum game.

  • Prison's delimma game (general form)

  • Coordination

Nash Equilibrium Intro - Keynes Beauty Contest

Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium is a set of actions, one for each of the agents, such that each action is the Best Response against the equilibrium strategies of the other players. (such that no player would benefit by changing his own strategy (only one player changes at a time!), provided the other players don’t change their strategies.)

Best response. an action ai is a best response, if for any other action, ai's utility is greater than utility of any other actions

Strategy

dominant strategy

si strictly dominates s'i, if utility of si is strictly greater than utilities of all other possible strategies. 

A dominant strategy for a player is one that produces the highest payoff of any strategy available for every possible action by the other players.

Very Weakly Dominate

si strictly dominates s'i, if utility of si is greater than or equal to utilities of all other possible strategies.

Dominant strategy: if one strategy domiantes all others.

A stratey profile consisting of dominant strategies for every player must be a Nash equilibrium

Pareto Optimality

Outcome: a solve of the matrix game

Pareto-dominate: one outcome O is at least as good for every agent as another outcome O' ((3,2) > (2,2)), and there's some agent who strictly prefers O to O'. We say that O Pareto-dominates O'

Definition of Pareto Optimality: An outcome is Pareto-optimal if there's no other outcome that Pareto-dominates it.

Prisoner's Dilemma's Punch line: The Nash equilibrium is the only non-Pareto-optimal outcome.

Paper Read: A Brief Introduction to the Basics of Game Theory Matthew O. Jackson, Stanford University

Framing the analysis:

  • Who are the players?

  • What actions are available to them?

  • what is the timing of the interactions? Are actions taken simultaneously or sequentially? Are interactions repeated? The order of play is also important. Moving after another player may give player i an advantage of knowing what the other player has done; it may also put player i at a disadvantage in terms of lost time or the ability to take some action. What information do different players have when they take actions?

  • what are the payoffs to the various players as a result of the interaction?

Mixed Strategies

So a profile of mixed strategies is an equilibrium if no player has some strategy that would offer a better payoff than his or her mixed strategy in reply to the mixed strategies of the other players

Timing (Extensive Form)

Use backward induction

Mixed Strategies and Nash Equilibrium

Strategy S for agent i is any probability distribution over the actions Ai.

  • Pure Strategy: only one action is played with positive probability
  • Mixed Strategy: more than one action is played with positive probability

expected utility of a mixed strategy is a weighted sum of all utilities times probability (Product of probabililties of each player playing their actions).

Best response. A strategy s is a BR iff its utility is greater than utility of every other s'.

(Mixed Strategy) Nash Equilibrium (this is not Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium) s = <s1,...sn> is a Nash equilibrium iff every other player is playing their best response

Nash's Theorem. Every finite (finite number of players, actions) game has a (Mixed Strategy) Nash equilibrium.

Mixed Nash equilibrium Compute the probability of each action so that it makes the other people indifferent about picking the actions.

Meaning of mixed strategies.

  • Randomize to confuse your opponent (to be balanced)
  • Randomize when uncertain about the other's action
  • A concise description of what might happen in repeated play: count of pure strategies in the limit
  • Describe population dynamics.

Computing Mixed Nash equilibrium is between P and NP.

Summary

Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium is a set of actions, one for each of the agents, such that each action is the Best Response against the equilibrium strategies of the other players. (such that no player would benefit by changing his own strategy (only one player changes at a time!), provided the other players don’t change their strategies.)

Mixed Nash equilibrium Compute the probability of each action so that it makes the other people indifferent about picking the actions.