IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/1544.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Bayesian games with a continuum of states

Author

Listed:
  • ,

    (Department of Economics, Bar Ilan University)

  • ,

    (Department of Economics and Nuffield College, University of Oxford)

Abstract

We show that every Bayesian game with purely atomic types has a measurable Bayesian equilibrium when the common knowledge relation is smooth. Conversely, for any common knowledge relation that is not smooth, there exists a type space that yields this common knowledge relation and payoffs such that the resulting Bayesian game will not have any Bayesian equilibrium. We show that our smoothness condition also rules out two paradoxes involving Bayesian games with a continuum of types: the impossibility of having a common prior on components when a common prior over the entire state space exists, and the possibility of interim betting/trade even when no such trade can be supported ex ante.

Suggested Citation

  • , & ,, 2017. "Bayesian games with a continuum of states," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:1544
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewFile/20171089/18840/558
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Heifetz, Aviad, 2006. "The positive foundation of the common prior assumption," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 105-120, July.
    2. Ziv Hellman, 2012. "A Game with No Bayesian Approximate Equilibria," Discussion Paper Series dp615, The Federmann Center for the Study of Rationality, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
    3. Feinberg, Yossi, 2000. "Characterizing Common Priors in the Form of Posteriors," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 91(2), pages 127-179, April.
    4. Paul R. Milgrom & Robert J. Weber, 1985. "Distributional Strategies for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 10(4), pages 619-632, November.
    5. , & ,, 2011. "Agreeing to agree," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(2), May.
    6. Erik J. Balder, 1988. "Generalized Equilibrium Results for Games with Incomplete Information," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 265-276, May.
    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. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2021. "Equilibria in infinite games of incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(2), pages 311-360, June.
    2. Einy, Ezra & Haimanko, Ori, 2020. "Equilibrium existence in games with a concave Bayesian potential," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 288-294.
    3. Bajoori, Elnaz & Flesch, János & Vermeulen, Dries, 2016. "Behavioral perfect equilibrium in Bayesian games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 78-109.
    4. Ori Haimanko, 2022. "Equilibrium existence in two-player contests without absolute continuity of information," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(1), pages 27-39, May.
    5. Hellman, Ziv, 2014. "A game with no Bayesian approximate equilibria," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 138-151.
    6. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2021. "Perfect equilibria in games of incomplete information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(4), pages 1591-1648, June.
    7. Ziv Hellman & Yehuda John Levy, 2020. "Equilibria Existence in Bayesian Games: Climbing the Countable Borel Equivalence Relation Hierarchy," Working Papers 2020-03, Bar-Ilan University, Department of Economics.
    8. Wei He & Xiang Sun & Yeneng Sun & Yishu Zeng, 2021. "Characterization of equilibrium existence and purification in general Bayesian games," Papers 2106.08563, arXiv.org.
    9. Seungjin Han, 2021. "Robust Equilibria in General Competing Mechanism Games," Papers 2109.13177, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2023.

    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. Chen, Yi-Chun & Lehrer, Ehud & Li, Jiangtao & Samet, Dov & Shmaya, Eran, 2015. "Agreeing to agree and Dutch books," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 108-116.
    2. Ziv Hellman & Yehuda John Levy, 2020. "Equilibria Existence in Bayesian Games: Climbing the Countable Borel Equivalence Relation Hierarchy," Working Papers 2020_15, Business School - Economics, University of Glasgow.
    3. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2021. "Perfect equilibria in games of incomplete information," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(4), pages 1591-1648, June.
    4. Ziv Hellman, 2014. "Countable spaces and common priors," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 43(1), pages 193-213, February.
    5. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2021. "Equilibria in infinite games of incomplete information," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(2), pages 311-360, June.
    6. Eric J. Hoffmann & Tarun Sabarwal, 2019. "Equilibrium existence in global games with general payoff structures," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(1), pages 105-115, May.
    7. Bajoori, Elnaz & Flesch, János & Vermeulen, Dries, 2016. "Behavioral perfect equilibrium in Bayesian games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 78-109.
    8. Hellman, Ziv, 2011. "Iterated expectations, compact spaces, and common priors," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 163-171, May.
    9. He, Wei & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2016. "Existence of equilibria in discontinuous Bayesian games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 181-194.
    10. Ziv Hellman & Miklós Pintér, 2022. "Charges and bets: a general characterisation of common priors," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 51(3), pages 567-587, November.
    11. Heifetz, Aviad & Meier, Martin & Schipper, Burkhard C., 2007. "Unawareness, Beliefs and Games," Bonn Econ Discussion Papers 6/2007, University of Bonn, Bonn Graduate School of Economics (BGSE).
    12. Martin Meier & Burkhard C. Schipper, 2014. "Speculative trade under unawareness: the infinite case," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 2(2), pages 147-160, October.
    13. Paulo Barelli & John Duggan, 2011. "Extremal Choice Equilibrium: Existence and Purification with Infinite-Dimensional Externalities," RCER Working Papers 567, University of Rochester - Center for Economic Research (RCER).
    14. Hellwig, Martin, 2022. "Incomplete-information games in large populations with anonymity," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 17(1), January.
    15. He, Wei & Sun, Xiang, 2014. "On the diffuseness of incomplete information game," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 131-137.
    16. Einy, Ezra & Haimanko, Ori, 2020. "Equilibrium existence in games with a concave Bayesian potential," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 288-294.
    17. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau & Richard McLean, 2014. "On the existence of Nash equilibrium in Bayesian games," Departmental Working Papers 201402, Rutgers University, Department of Economics.
    18. Yuhki Hosoya & Chaowen Yu, 2022. "On the approximate purification of mixed strategies in games with infinite action sets," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(1), pages 69-93, May.
    19. Heifetz, Aviad, 2006. "The positive foundation of the common prior assumption," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 56(1), pages 105-120, July.
    20. Hanjoon Michael Jung, 2020. "Perfect regular equilibrium," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(4), pages 380-398, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Bayesian games; Bayesian equilibrium; common priors; continuum of states;
    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:the:publsh:1544. 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: Martin J. Osborne (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    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.