IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/gamebe/v118y2019icp110-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Rationalizable strategies in random games

Author

Listed:
  • Pei, Ting
  • Takahashi, Satoru

Abstract

We study point-rationalizable and rationalizable strategies in random games. In a random n×n symmetric game, an explicit formula is derived for the distribution of the number of point-rationalizable strategies, which is of the order n in probability as n→∞. The number of rationalizable strategies depends on the payoff distribution, and is bounded by the number of point-rationalizable strategies (lower bound), and the number of strategies that are not strictly dominated by a pure strategy (upper bound). Both bounds are tight in the sense that there exists a payoff distribution such that the number of rationalizable strategies reaches the bound with a probability close to one. We also show that given a payoff distribution with a finite third moment, as n→∞, all strategies are rationalizable with probability one. Our results qualitatively extend to two-player asymmetric games, but not to games with more than two players.

Suggested Citation

  • Pei, Ting & Takahashi, Satoru, 2019. "Rationalizable strategies in random games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 110-125.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:118:y:2019:i:c:p:110-125
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2019.08.011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825619301289
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.geb.2019.08.011?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. 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.
    2. Stanford William, 1995. "A Note on the Probability of k Pure Nash Equilibria in Matrix Games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 238-246, May.
    3. Pearce, David G, 1984. "Rationalizable Strategic Behavior and the Problem of Perfection," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 1029-1050, July.
    4. Borgers, Tilman, 1993. "Pure Strategy Dominance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(2), pages 423-430, March.
    5. Bernheim, B Douglas, 1984. "Rationalizable Strategic Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(4), pages 1007-1028, July.
    6. 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.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Andrew McLennan, 2005. "The Expected Number of Nash Equilibria of a Normal Form Game," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(1), pages 141-174, January.
    10. 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.
    11. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1255-1277, November.
    12. Jonathan Weinstein, 2016. "The Effect of Changes in Risk Attitude on Strategic Behavior," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 84, pages 1881-1902, September.
    13. Roberts, David P., 2005. "Pure Nash equilibria of coordination matrix games," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 89(1), pages 7-11, October.
    14. Nikolai S. Kukushkin & Satoru Takahashi & Tetsuo Yamamori, 2005. "Improvement dynamics in games with strategic complementarities," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 33(2), pages 229-238, June.
    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. J'anos Flesch & Arkadi Predtetchinski & Ville Suomala, 2021. "Random perfect information games," Papers 2104.10528, arXiv.org.
    2. 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.
    3. Noga Alon & Kirill Rudov & Leeat Yariv, 2021. "Dominance Solvability in Random Games," Working Papers 2021-84, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    4. 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.
    5. 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.
    6. Samuel C. Wiese & Torsten Heinrich, 2022. "The Frequency of Convergent Games under Best-Response Dynamics," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 689-700, June.

    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. Torsten Heinrich & Yoojin Jang & Luca Mungo & Marco Pangallo & Alex Scott & Bassel Tarbush & Samuel Wiese, 2021. "Best-response dynamics, playing sequences, and convergence to equilibrium in random games," Papers 2101.04222, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2022.
    2. 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.
    3. 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.
    4. 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.
    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. Alexander Zimper, 2007. "A fixed point characterization of the dominance-solvability of lattice games with strategic substitutes," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(1), pages 107-117, September.
    7. repec:ebl:ecbull:v:3:y:2005:i:7:p:1-6 is not listed on IDEAS
    8. Guarino, Pierfrancesco & Ziegler, Gabriel, 2022. "Optimism and pessimism in strategic interactions under ignorance," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 559-585.
    9. Zimper, Alexander, 2006. "Uniqueness conditions for strongly point-rationalizable solutions to games with metrizable strategy sets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(6), pages 729-751, September.
    10. Noga Alon & Kirill Rudov & Leeat Yariv, 2021. "Dominance Solvability in Random Games," Working Papers 2021-84, Princeton University. Economics Department..
    11. Arieli, Itai & Babichenko, Yakov, 2016. "Random extensive form games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 517-535.
    12. Chen, Yi-Chun & Long, Ngo Van & Luo, Xiao, 2007. "Iterated strict dominance in general games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 61(2), pages 299-315, November.
    13. 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.
    14. Tom Johnston & Michael Savery & Alex Scott & Bassel Tarbush, 2023. "Game Connectivity and Adaptive Dynamics," Papers 2309.10609, arXiv.org, revised Oct 2024.
    15. Roger Guesnerie & Pedro Jara-Moroni, 2007. "Expectational coordination in a class of economic models: Strategic substitutabilities versus strategic complementarities," PSE Working Papers halshs-00587837, HAL.
    16. Calford, Evan M., 2020. "Uncertainty aversion in game theory: Experimental evidence," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 720-734.
    17. Michael Trost, 2013. "Epistemic characterizations of iterated deletion of inferior strategy profiles in preference-based type spaces," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 42(3), pages 755-776, August.
    18. Takuya Iimura & Toshimasa Maruta & Takahiro Watanabe, 2020. "Two-person pairwise solvable games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(2), pages 385-409, June.
    19. Jara-Moroni, Pedro, 2012. "Rationalizability in games with a continuum of players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 668-684.
    20. Xiao Luo & Xuewen Qian & Chen Qu, 2020. "Iterated elimination procedures," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(2), pages 437-465, September.
    21. Roger Guesnerie & Pedro Jara-Moroni, 2011. "Expectational coordination in simple economic contexts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 47(2), pages 205-246, June.

    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:118:y:2019:i:c:p:110-125. 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.