www.coalitiontheory.net
Published on www.coalitiontheory.net (http://www.coalitiontheory.net)

Home > Learning to Play Approximate Nash Equilibria in Games with Many Players

Learning to Play Approximate Nash Equilibria in Games with Many Players

Working paper
Author/s: 
Edward Cartwright
Issue number: 
2004.085
Publisher: 
FEEM
Year: 
2004
PDF [1]
We illustrate one way in which a population of boundedly rational individuals can learn to play an approximate Nash equilibrium. Players are assumed to make strategy choices using a combination of imitation and innovation. We begin by looking at an imitation dynamic and provide conditions under which play evolves to an imitation equilibrium; convergence is conditional on the network of social interaction. We then illustrate, through example, how imitation and innovation can complement each other; in particular, we demonstrate how imitation can .help. a population to learn to play a Nash equilibrium where more rational methods do not. This leads to our main result in which we provide a general class of large game for which the imitation with innovation dynamic almost surely converges to an approximate Nash, imitation equilibrium.
Tags: 
Coalition Formation Theory [2]

Source URL:http://www.coalitiontheory.net/content/learning-play-approximate-nash-equilibria-games-many-players

Links
[1] http://www.feem.it/userfiles/attach/Publication/NDL2004/NDL2004-085.pdf [2] http://www.coalitiontheory.net/research-areas/coalition-formation-theory