IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v75y2012i1p265-276.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Forward induction equilibrium

Author

Listed:
  • Man, Priscilla T.Y.

Abstract

Forward induction is the notion that players in a game assume, even when confronted with an unexpected event, that their opponents chose rationally. It is often motivated by invariance, namely, that the normal form game captures all strategically relevant information. To be consistent with this motivation, this paper proposes a normal form forward induction equilibrium definition by constructing outcome spaces for normal form games. Forward induction equilibrium exists for all finite extensive form games with perfect recall. It may not satisfy backward induction. The lack of set inclusion relationship between forward induction equilibria and extensive form rationalizable strategy profiles illuminates on the differences between the two concepts.

Suggested Citation

  • Man, Priscilla T.Y., 2012. "Forward induction equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(1), pages 265-276.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:75:y:2012:i:1:p:265-276
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2011.12.004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825611002028
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2011.12.004?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mailath George J. & Samuelson Larry & Swinkels Jeroen M., 1994. "Normal Form Structures in Extensive Form Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 64(2), pages 325-371, December.
    2. Battigalli, Pierpaolo, 1996. "Strategic Rationality Orderings and the Best Rationalization Principle," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 178-200, April.
    3. Srihari Govindan & Robert Wilson, 2012. "Axiomatic Equilibrium Selection for Generic Two‐Player Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 80(4), pages 1639-1699, July.
    4. Elmes Susan & Reny Philip J., 1994. "On the Strategic Equivalence of Extensive Form Games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 1-23, February.
    5. Dekel, Eddie & Fudenberg, Drew, 1990. "Rational behavior with payoff uncertainty," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 243-267, December.
    6. Mailath, George J & Samuelson, Larry & Swinkels, Jeroen M, 1993. "Extensive Form Reasoning in Normal Form Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(2), pages 273-302, March.
    7. Srihari Govindan & Robert Wilson, 2009. "On Forward Induction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(1), pages 1-28, January.
    8. McLennan, Andrew, 1985. "Justifiable Beliefs in Sequential Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 53(4), pages 889-904, July.
    9. In-Koo Cho & David M. Kreps, 1987. "Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 102(2), pages 179-221.
    10. Govindan, Srihari & McLennan, Andrew, 2001. "On the Generic Finiteness of Equilibrium Outcome Distributions in Game Forms," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(2), pages 455-471, March.
    11. Banks, Jeffrey S & Sobel, Joel, 1987. "Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 55(3), pages 647-661, May.
    12. Kohlberg, Elon & Mertens, Jean-Francois, 1986. "On the Strategic Stability of Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 54(5), pages 1003-1037, September.
    13. van Damme, Eric, 1989. "Stable equilibria and forward induction," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 48(2), pages 476-496, August.
    14. Pearce, David G, 1984. "Rationalizable Strategic Behavior and the Problem of Perfection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 1029-1050, July.
    15. Govindan, Srihari & Robson, Arthur J., 1998. "Forward Induction, Public Randomization, and Admissibility," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 82(2), pages 451-457, October.
    16. Gul, Faruk & Pearce, David G., 1996. "Forward Induction and Public Randomization," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 43-64, July.
    17. Shimoji, Makoto & Watson, Joel, 1998. "Conditional Dominance, Rationalizability, and Game Forms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 161-195, December.
    18. Battigalli, Pierpaolo & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2002. "Strong Belief and Forward Induction Reasoning," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 356-391, October.
    19. Reny, Philip J, 1992. "Backward Induction, Normal Form Perfection and Explicable Equilibria," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 60(3), pages 627-649, May.
    20. Hillas, John & Kohlberg, Elon, 2002. "Foundations of strategic equilibrium," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, in: R.J. Aumann & S. Hart (ed.), Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 42, pages 1597-1663, Elsevier.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Evdokimov, Piotr & Rustichini, Aldo, 2016. "Forward induction: Thinking and behavior," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 195-208.
    2. Dufwenberg, Martin & Köhlin, Gunnar & Martinsson, Peter & Medhin, Haileselassie, 2016. "Thanks but no thanks: A new policy to reduce land conflict," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 31-50.
    3. Sun, Lan, 2016. "Hypothesis testing equilibrium in signaling games," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 557, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    4. Perea, Andrés, 2017. "Forward induction reasoning and correct beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 489-516.
    5. Catonini, Emiliano, 2019. "Rationalizability and epistemic priority orderings," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 101-117.
    6. Luca Anderlini & Dino Gerardi & Roger Lagunoff, 2014. "Do Actions Speak Louder Than Words? Auditing, Disclosure, and Verification in Organizations," Working Papers gueconwpa~14-14-04, Georgetown University, Department of Economics, revised 13 Jun 2015.
    7. Anderlini, Luca & Gerardi, Dino & Lagunoff, Roger, 2016. "Auditing, disclosure, and verification in decentralized decision problems," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 393-408.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Srihari Govindan & Robert Wilson, 2009. "On Forward Induction," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(1), pages 1-28, January.
    2. Andrés Perea & Elias Tsakas, 2019. "Limited focus in dynamic games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 48(2), pages 571-607, June.
    3. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Dynamic unawareness and rationalizable behavior," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 50-68.
    4. Dekel, Eddie & Siniscalchi, Marciano, 2015. "Epistemic Game Theory," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    5. Perea, Andrés, 2017. "Forward induction reasoning and correct beliefs," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 489-516.
    6. Burkhard C. Schipper & Hang Zhou, 2022. "Level-k Thinking in the Extensive Form," Working Papers 352, University of California, Davis, Department of Economics.
    7. Catonini, Emiliano, 2020. "On non-monotonic strategic reasoning," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 209-224.
    8. Clark, Daniel & Fudenberg, Drew & He, Kevin, 2022. "Observability, dominance, and induction in learning models," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).
    9. Pomatto, Luciano, 2022. "Stable matching under forward-induction reasoning," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(4), November.
    10. Govindan, Srihari & Wilson, Robert B., 2008. "Decision-Theoretic Forward Induction," Research Papers 1986, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    11. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2013. "Dynamic unawareness and rationalizable behavior," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 50-68.
    12. Françoise Forges & József Sákovics, 2022. "Tenable threats when Nash equilibrium is the norm," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 51(3), pages 589-605, November.
    13. Catonini, Emiliano, 2019. "Rationalizability and epistemic priority orderings," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 101-117.
    14. Geir B. Asheim & Martin Dufwenberg, 2003. "Deductive Reasoning in Extensive Games," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(487), pages 305-325, April.
    15. Adam Brandenburger & Amanda Friedenberg, 2014. "Self-Admissible Sets," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Language of Game Theory Putting Epistemics into the Mathematics of Games, chapter 8, pages 213-249, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    16. Andreas Blume & Peter H. Kriss & Roberto A. Weber, 2017. "Pre-play communication with forgone costly messages: experimental evidence on forward induction," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 20(2), pages 368-395, June.
    17. Aviad Heifetz & Andrés Perea, 2015. "On the outcome equivalence of backward induction and extensive form rationalizability," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 44(1), pages 37-59, February.
    18. Liu, Shuo & Pei, Harry, 2020. "Monotone equilibria in signaling games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    19. Heifetz Aviad & Meier Martin & Schipper Burkhard C., 2021. "Prudent Rationalizability in Generalized Extensive-form Games with Unawareness," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 21(2), pages 525-556, June.
    20. Asheim, G.B. & Dufwenberg, M., 1996. "Admissibility and Common Knowledge," Discussion Paper 1996-16, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Forward induction; Invariance; Equilibrium refinement;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:75:y:2012:i:1:p:265-276. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/622836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.