Best reply structure and equilibrium convergence in generic games.

ABSTRACT: Game theory is widely used to model interacting biological and social systems. In some situations, players may converge to an equilibrium, e.g., a Nash equilibrium, but in other situations their strategic dynamics oscillate endogenously. If the system is not designed to encourage convergence, which of these two behaviors can we expect a priori? To address this question, we follow an approach that is popular in theoretical ecology to study the stability of ecosystems: We generate payoff matrices at random, subject to constraints that may represent properties of real-world games. We show that best reply cycles, basic topological structures in games, predict nonconvergence of six well-known learning algorithms that are used in biology or have support from experiments with human players. Best

SUBMITTER: Pangallo M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6382402 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature