IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/2206.05241.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Subgame Credible Nash Equilibrium

Author

Listed:
  • Mehmet Mars Seven

Abstract

We propose the Subgame Credible Nash Equilibrium (SCNE), a refinement of subgame perfect Nash equilibrium (SPNE) for multi-stage games. SCNE retains the internal credibility requirement of SPNE -- equilibrium behavior in every subgame -- and adds an external credibility requirement across equivalent subgames: whenever a player's prescribed continuation strategy differs across equivalent subgames, her own continuation payoff must not decrease. The intuition is that credible punishments or promises should not strictly harm the punisher relative to an equivalent no-punishment subgame. The SCNE eliminates equilibria sustained by self-harming punishments or promises while preserving existence. Every multi-stage game admits an SCNE, and if each stage game has a unique Nash equilibrium, the SCNE is unique.

Suggested Citation

  • Mehmet Mars Seven, 2022. "Subgame Credible Nash Equilibrium," Papers 2206.05241, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2025.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2206.05241
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://arxiv.org/pdf/2206.05241
    File Function: Latest version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:arx:papers:2206.05241. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: arXiv administrators (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://arxiv.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.