IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/amz/wpaper/2021-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Best-Response Dynamics, Playing Sequences, And Convergence To Equilibrium In Random Games

Author

Listed:
  • Pangallo, Marco
  • Heinrich, Torsten
  • Jang, Yoojin
  • Scott, Alex
  • Tarbush, Bassel
  • Wiese, Samuel
  • Mungo, Luca

Abstract

We show that the playing sequence–the order in which players update their actions–is a crucial determinant of whether the best-response dynamic converges to a Nash equilibrium. Specifically, we analyze the probability that the best-response dynamic converges to a pure Nash equilibrium in random n-player m-action games under three distinct playing sequences: clockwork sequences (players take turns according to a fixed cyclic order), random sequences, and simultaneous updating by all players. We analytically characterize the convergence properties of the clockwork sequence best-response dynamic. Our key asymptotic result is that this dynamic almost never converges to a pure Nash equilibrium when n and m are large. By contrast, the random sequence best-response dynamic converges almost always to a pure Nash equilibrium when one exists and n and m are large. The clockwork best-response dynamic deserves particular attention: we show through simulation that, compared to random or simultaneous updating, its convergence properties are closest to those exhibited by three popular learning rules that have been calibrated to human game-playing in experiments (reinforcement learning, fictitious play, and replicator dynamics).

Suggested Citation

  • 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.
  • Handle: RePEc:amz:wpaper:2021-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/files/paper.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pangallo, Marco & Farmer, J. Doyne & Heinrich, Torsten, "undated". "Best reply structure and equilibrium convergence in generic games," INET Oxford Working Papers 2017-07, Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, revised Mar 2018.
    2. 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.
    3. Sarin, Rajiv & Vahid, Farshid, 2001. "Predicting How People Play Games: A Simple Dynamic Model of Choice," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 34(1), pages 104-122, January.
    4. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David, 1998. "Learning in games," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(3-5), pages 631-639, May.
    5. Germano, Fabrizio & Lugosi, Gabor, 2007. "Global Nash convergence of Foster and Young's regret testing," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 135-154, July.
    6. Erev, Ido & Roth, Alvin E, 1998. "Predicting How People Play Games: Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games with Unique, Mixed Strategy Equilibria," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 88(4), pages 848-881, September.
    7. Babichenko, Yakov, 2013. "Best-reply dynamics in large binary-choice anonymous games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 130-144.
    8. McLennan, Andrew & Berg, Johannes, 2005. "Asymptotic expected number of Nash equilibria of two-player normal form games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 264-295, May.
    9. 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.
    10. Blume Lawrence E., 1993. "The Statistical Mechanics of Strategic Interaction," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 5(3), pages 387-424, July.
    11. Van Huyck, John & Battalio, Raymond & Mathur, Sondip & Van Huyck, Patsy & Ortmann, Andreas, 1995. "On the Origin of Convention: Evidence from Symmetric Bargaining Games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 24(2), pages 187-212.
    12. 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.
    13. 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.
    14. 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.
    15. Borgers, Tilman & Sarin, Rajiv, 1997. "Learning Through Reinforcement and Replicator Dynamics," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 77(1), pages 1-14, November.
    16. Cheung, Yin-Wong & Friedman, Daniel, 1997. "Individual Learning in Normal Form Games: Some Laboratory Results," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 19(1), pages 46-76, April.
    17. Andrew McLennan, 2005. "The Expected Number of Nash Equilibria of a Normal Form Game," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 141-174, January.
    18. Klaus Kultti & Hannu Salonen & Hannu Vartiainen, 2011. "Distribution of pure Nash equilibria in n-person games with random best replies," Discussion Papers 71, Aboa Centre for Economics.
    19. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2002:i:22:p:1-6 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Friedman, James W. & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2001. "Learning in Games by Random Sampling," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 98(1), pages 55-84, May.
    21. 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.
    22. Arthur, W Brian, 1991. "Designing Economic Agents that Act Like Human Agents: A Behavioral Approach to Bounded Rationality," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(2), pages 353-359, May.
    23. 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.
    24. , P. & , Peyton, 2006. "Regret testing: learning to play Nash equilibrium without knowing you have an opponent," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(3), pages 341-367, September.
    25. Dindos, Martin & Mezzetti, Claudio, 2006. "Better-reply dynamics and global convergence to Nash equilibrium in aggregative games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 54(2), pages 261-292, February.
    26. Candogan, Ozan & Ozdaglar, Asuman & Parrilo, Pablo A., 2013. "Dynamics in near-potential games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 66-90.
    27. Drew Fudenberg & David K. Levine, 1998. "The Theory of Learning in Games," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262061945, April.
    28. Pangallo, Marco & Sanders, James B.T. & Galla, Tobias & Farmer, J. Doyne, 2022. "Towards a taxonomy of learning dynamics in 2 × 2 games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 1-21.
    29. Friedman, Daniel, 1996. "Equilibrium in Evolutionary Games: Some Experimental Results," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 106(434), pages 1-25, January.
    30. Vincent Boucher, 2017. "Selecting Equilibria using Best-Response Dynamics," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 37(4), pages 2728-2734.
    31. Tetsuo Yamamori & Satoru Takahashi, 2002. "The pure Nash equilibrium property and the quasi-acyclic condition," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 3(22), pages 1-6.
    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. 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.

    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. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Tom Johnston & Michael Savery & Alex Scott & Bassel Tarbush, 2023. "Game Connectivity and Adaptive Dynamics," Papers 2309.10609, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    4. Jonathan Newton, 2018. "Evolutionary Game Theory: A Renaissance," Games, MDPI, vol. 9(2), pages 1-67, May.
    5. 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.
    6. 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.
    7. Pei, Ting & Takahashi, Satoru, 2019. "Rationalizable strategies in random games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 110-125.
    8. Ed Hopkins, 2002. "Two Competing Models of How People Learn in Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2141-2166, November.
    9. Battalio,R. & Samuelson,L. & Huyck,J. van, 1998. "Risk dominance, payoff dominance and probabilistic choice learning," Working papers 2, Wisconsin Madison - Social Systems.
    10. Ho, Teck H. & Camerer, Colin F. & Chong, Juin-Kuan, 2007. "Self-tuning experience weighted attraction learning in games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 133(1), pages 177-198, March.
    11. Jakub Bielawski & Thiparat Chotibut & Fryderyk Falniowski & Michal Misiurewicz & Georgios Piliouras, 2022. "Unpredictable dynamics in congestion games: memory loss can prevent chaos," Papers 2201.10992, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2022.
    12. Ben Amiet & Andrea Collevecchio & Kais Hamza, 2020. "When "Better" is better than "Best"," Papers 2011.00239, arXiv.org.
    13. Duffy, John, 2006. "Agent-Based Models and Human Subject Experiments," Handbook of Computational Economics, in: Leigh Tesfatsion & Kenneth L. Judd (ed.), Handbook of Computational Economics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 19, pages 949-1011, Elsevier.
    14. Semeshenko, Viktoriya & Gordon, Mirta B. & Nadal, Jean-Pierre, 2008. "Collective states in social systems with interacting learning agents," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(19), pages 4903-4916.
    15. J. Van Huyck & R. Battalio & F. Rankin, 1996. "On the Evolution of Convention: Evidence from Coordination Games," Levine's Working Paper Archive 548, David K. Levine.
    16. Erhao Xie, 2019. "Monetary Payoff and Utility Function in Adaptive Learning Models," Staff Working Papers 19-50, Bank of Canada.
    17. DeJong, D.V. & Blume, A. & Neumann, G., 1998. "Learning in Sender-Receiver Games," Other publications TiSEM 4a8b4f46-f30b-4ad2-bb0c-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    18. Jean-François Laslier & Bernard Walliser, 2015. "Stubborn learning," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 79(1), pages 51-93, July.
    19. Xie, Erhao, 2021. "Empirical properties and identification of adaptive learning models in behavioral game theory," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 798-821.
    20. Nick Feltovich, 2000. "Reinforcement-Based vs. Belief-Based Learning Models in Experimental Asymmetric-Information," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(3), pages 605-642, May.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Best-response dynamics; equilibrium convergence; random games; learning models in games;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C73 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Stochastic and Dynamic Games; Evolutionary Games
    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:amz:wpaper:2021-02. 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: INET Oxford admin team (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inoxfuk.html .

    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.