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http://hdl.handle.net/10419/56319
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| Title: | | The possibility of impossible stairways and greener grass  |
| Authors: | | Voorneveld, Mark |
| Issue Date: | | 2007 |
| Series/Report no.: | | SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 673 |
| Abstract: | | In classical game theory, players have finitely many actions and evaluate outcomes of mixed strategies using a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Allowing a larger, but countable, player set introduces a host of phenomena that are impossible in finite games. Firstly, in coordination games, all players have the same preferences: switching to a weakly dominant action makes everyone at least as well off as before. Nevertheless, there are coordination games where the best outcome occurs if everyone chooses a weakly dominated action, while the worst outcome occurs if everyone chooses the weakly dominant action. Secondly, the location of payoff-dominant equilibria behaves capriciously: two coordination games that look so much alike that even the consequences of unilateral deviations are the same may nevertheless have disjoint sets of payoff-dominant equilibria. Thirdly, a large class of games has no (pure or mixed) Nash equilibria. Following the proverb the grass is always greener on the other side of the hedge, greener-grass games model constant discontent: in one part of the strategy space, players would rather switch to its complement. Once there, they'd rather switch back. |
| Subjects: | | coordination games dominant strategies payoff-dominance nonexistence of equilibrium tail events |
| JEL: | | C72 |
| Document Type: | | Working Paper |
| Appears in Collections: | | SSE/EFI Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance, EFI - The Economic Research Institute, Stockholm School of Economics
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