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On the Number of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibria in Random Games

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  • Rinott, Yosef
  • Scarsini, Marco

Abstract

How many pure Nash equilibria can we expect to have in a finite game chosen at random? Solutions to the above problem have been proposed in some special cases. In this paper we assume independence among the profiles, but we allow either positive or negative dependence among the players' payoffs in a same profile. We provide asymptotic results for the distribution of the number of Nash equilibria when either the number of players or the number of strategies increases. We will show that different dependence assumptions lead to different asymptotic results.
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  • Rinott, Yosef & Scarsini, Marco, 2000. "On the Number of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibria in Random Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 274-293, November.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:33:y:2000:i:2:p:274-293
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    1. Yosef Rinott & Vladimir Rotar, 2000. "Normal approximations by Stein's method," Decisions in Economics and Finance, Springer;Associazione per la Matematica, vol. 23(1), pages 15-29.
    2. Stanford, William, 1999. "On the number of pure strategy Nash equilibria in finite common payoffs games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 29-34, January.
    3. Stanford, William, 1997. "On the distribution of pure strategy equilibria in finite games with vector payoffs," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 33(2), pages 115-127, April.
    4. William Stanford, 1996. "The Limit Distribution of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibria in Symmetric Bimatrix Games," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 21(3), pages 726-733, August.
    5. Powers, Imelda Yeung, 1990. "Limiting Distributions of the Number of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibria in N-Person Games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 19(3), pages 277-286.
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    Cited by:

    1. Ben Amiet & Andrea Collevecchio & Kais Hamza, 2020. "When "Better" is better than "Best"," Papers 2011.00239, arXiv.org.
    2. Szabó, György & Borsos, István & Szombati, Edit, 2019. "Games, graphs and Kirchhoff laws," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 521(C), pages 416-423.
    3. Tom Johnston & Michael Savery & Alex Scott & Bassel Tarbush, 2023. "Game Connectivity and Adaptive Dynamics," Papers 2309.10609, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    4. Pangallo, Marco & Heinrich, Torsten & Jang, Yoojin & Scott, Alex & Tarbush, Bassel & Wiese, Samuel & Mungo, Luca, 2021. "Best-Response Dynamics, Playing Sequences, And Convergence To Equilibrium In Random Games," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-23, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    5. Porter, Ryan & Nudelman, Eugene & Shoham, Yoav, 2008. "Simple search methods for finding a Nash equilibrium," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(2), pages 642-662, July.
    6. Ben Amiet & Andrea Collevecchio & Marco Scarsini & Ziwen Zhong, 2021. "Pure Nash Equilibria and Best-Response Dynamics in Random Games," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 46(4), pages 1552-1572, November.
    7. Andrea Collevecchio & Hlafo Alfie Mimun & Matteo Quattropani & Marco Scarsini, 2024. "Basins of Attraction in Two-Player Random Ordinal Potential Games," Papers 2407.05460, arXiv.org.
    8. Torsten Heinrich & Yoojin Jang & Luca Mungo & Marco Pangallo & Alex Scott & Bassel Tarbush & Samuel Wiese, 2023. "Best-response dynamics, playing sequences, and convergence to equilibrium in random games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 52(3), pages 703-735, September.
    9. Takahashi, Satoru, 2008. "The number of pure Nash equilibria in a random game with nondecreasing best responses," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 328-340, May.
    10. Stanford, William, 2010. "The number of pure strategy Nash equilibria in random multi-team games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 108(3), pages 352-354, September.
    11. Pangallo, Marco & Heinrich, Torsten & Jang, Yoojin & Scott, Alex & Tarbush, Bassel & Wiese, Samuel & Mungo, Luca, 2021. "Best-Response Dynamics, Playing Sequences, And Convergence To Equilibrium In Random Games," INET Oxford Working Papers 2021-02, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford.
    12. Collevecchio, Andrea & LiCalzi, Marco, 2012. "The probability of nontrivial common knowledge," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 76(2), pages 556-570.
    13. Mimun, Hlafo Alfie & Quattropani, Matteo & Scarsini, Marco, 2024. "Best-response dynamics in two-person random games with correlated payoffs," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 239-262.
    14. Rinott, Yosef & Rotar, Vladimir, 2001. "A remark on quadrant normal probabilities in high dimensions," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 51(1), pages 47-51, January.
    15. Pei, Ting & Takahashi, Satoru, 2019. "Rationalizable strategies in random games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 110-125.
    16. Andrea Collevecchio & Tuan-Minh Nguyen & Ziwen Zhong, 2024. "Finding pure Nash equilibria in large random games," Papers 2406.09732, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2024.
    17. Arieli, Itai & Babichenko, Yakov, 2016. "Random extensive form games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 517-535.

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