IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/snopef/v5y2024i4d10.1007_s43069-024-00375-z.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Behavioral Test and Classification of Solution Concepts in Games

Author

Listed:
  • Alphonse Fodouop Fotso

    (University of Maroua, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Mathematics and Computer sciences)

  • Roland Pongou

    (University of Ottawa)

  • Bertrand Tchantcho

    (University of Yaounde I
    Univ. Cergy-Pontoise, CNRS)

Abstract

We formalize three leading rationality approaches in a general game environment: rational optimism, conservatism, and prudence (or maximin rationality). This formalization leads to the formulation of a behavioral test of rationality in static and dynamic games. We then test 12 important concepts of myopic and farsighted rationality for such games, comprising the von Neumann-Morgenstern stable sets, the Nash equilibrium, the core, the Harsanyi’s stable sets, and their most prominent descendants. While most of these solution concepts are either rationally optimistic or conservative, all fail the prudence test. We find that the prudence criterion addresses a lack of maximality and anticipation in both the rationally optimistic and the conservative approaches and is therefore more demanding.

Suggested Citation

  • Alphonse Fodouop Fotso & Roland Pongou & Bertrand Tchantcho, 2024. "A Behavioral Test and Classification of Solution Concepts in Games," SN Operations Research Forum, Springer, vol. 5(4), pages 1-35, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:snopef:v:5:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s43069-024-00375-z
    DOI: 10.1007/s43069-024-00375-z
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s43069-024-00375-z
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s43069-024-00375-z?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. Shapley, Lloyd S & Shubik, Martin, 1969. "On the Core of an Economic System with Externalities," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 59(4), pages 678-684, Part I Se.
    2. Béal, Sylvain & Durieu, Jacques & Solal, Philippe, 2008. "Farsighted coalitional stability in TU-games," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 56(3), pages 303-313, November.
    3. , & , J. & ,, 2011. "Von Neumann-Morgenstern farsightedly stable sets in two-sided matching," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(3), September.
    4. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & Mauleon, Ana & Vannetelbosch, Vincent J., 2004. "Rationalizability for social environments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 49(1), pages 135-156, October.
    5. Effrosyni Diamantoudi & Licun Xue, 2003. "Farsighted stability in hedonic games," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 21(1), pages 39-61, August.
    6. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 1999. "A Theory of Endogenous Coalition Structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 26(2), pages 286-336, January.
    7. Jordan, J.S., 2006. "Pillage and property," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 131(1), pages 26-44, November.
    8. Ana Mauleon & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2004. "Farsightedness and Cautiousness in Coalition Formation Games with Positive Spillovers," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 56(3), pages 291-324, May.
    9. Serrano, Roberto & Shimomura, Ken-Ichi, 1998. "Beyond Nash Bargaining Theory: The Nash Set," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 83(2), pages 286-307, December.
    10. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 1997. "Equilibrium Binding Agreements," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 73(1), pages 30-78, March.
    11. Gilboa, Itzhak & Schmeidler, David, 1989. "Maxmin expected utility with non-unique prior," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 141-153, April.
    12. Konishi, Hideo & Ray, Debraj, 2003. "Coalition formation as a dynamic process," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 110(1), pages 1-41, May.
    13. Herman Demeze & Issofa Moyouwou & Roland Pongou, 2016. "The Welfare Economics of Tactical Voting in Democracies: A Partial Identification Equilibrium Analysis," Working Papers 1611e, University of Ottawa, Department of Economics.
    14. Licun Xue, 1998. "Coalitional stability under perfect foresight," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 11(3), pages 603-627.
    15. Lloyd S. Shapley, 1967. "On balanced sets and cores," Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(4), pages 453-460.
    16. Bloch, Francis, 1996. "Sequential Formation of Coalitions in Games with Externalities and Fixed Payoff Division," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 14(1), pages 90-123, May.
    17. Roland Pongou & Roberto Serrano, 2013. "Fidelity Networks and Long-Run Trends in HIV/AIDS Gender Gaps," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 298-302, May.
    18. John C. Harsanyi, 1974. "An Equilibrium-Point Interpretation of Stable Sets and a Proposed Alternative Definition," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(11), pages 1472-1495, July.
    19. Leonid Hurwicz & Leonard Shapiro, 1978. "Incentive Structures Maximizing Residual Gain under Incomplete Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 9(1), pages 180-191, Spring.
    20. Fotso, Alphonse Fodouop & Pongou, Roland & Tchantcho, Bertrand, 2017. "Conservative vs optimistic rationality in games: A revisitation," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 42-47.
    21. Karos, Dominik & Robles, Laura, 2021. "Full farsighted rationality," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 409-424.
    22. Rubinstein, Ariel, 1980. "Stability of decision systems under majority rule," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 23(2), pages 150-159, October.
    23. Demeze, Herman & Moyouwou, Issofa & Pongou, Roland, 2016. "The Welfare Economics of Tactical Voting in Democracies: A Partial Identification Equilibrium Analysis," MPRA Paper 70607, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ray, Debraj & Vohra, Rajiv, 2015. "Coalition Formation," Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications,, Elsevier.
    2. Dutta, Bhaskar & Vartiainen, Hannu, 2020. "Coalition formation and history dependence," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(1), January.
    3. Bhaskar Dutta & Hannu Vartiainen, 2018. "Coalition Formation and History Dependence," Working Papers 1006, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.
    4. Dutta, Bhaskar & Vohra, Rajiv, 2017. "Rational expectations and farsighted stability," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(3), September.
    5. Mert Kimya, 2023. "Coalition Formation Under Dominance Invariance," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 480-496, June.
    6. Kimya, Mert, 2020. "Equilibrium coalitional behavior," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 15(2), May.
    7. Bloch, Francis & van den Nouweland, Anne, 2020. "Farsighted stability with heterogeneous expectations," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 32-54.
    8. Debraj Ray & Rajiv Vohra, 2015. "The Farsighted Stable Set," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83(3), pages 977-1011, May.
    9. Kimya, Mert, 2021. "Coalition Formation Under Dominance Invariance," Working Papers 202106, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    10. Vartiainen, Hannu, 2011. "Dynamic coalitional equilibrium," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 146(2), pages 672-698, March.
    11. Korpela, Ville & Lombardi, Michele & Vartiainen, Hannu, 2021. "Implementation in largest consistent set via rights structures," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 202-212.
    12. Korpela, Ville & Lombardi, Michele & Vartiainen, Hannu, 2019. "Implementation with foresighted agents," MPRA Paper 102496, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Kimya, Mert, 2022. "Farsighted objections and maximality in one-to-one matching problems," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 204(C).
    14. Kimya, Mert, 2021. "Coalition Formation Under Dominance Invariance," Working Papers 2021-06, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    15. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques & Mauleon, Ana & Vannetelbosch, Vincent, 2020. "Matching with myopic and farsighted players," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 190(C).
    16. Kimya, Mert, 2020. "Farsighted Objections and Maximality in One-to-one Matching Problems," Working Papers 202014, University of Sydney, School of Economics, revised Jul 2021.
    17. P. Jean-Jacques Herings & Ana Mauleon & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2010. "Coalition Formation among Farsighted Agents," Games, MDPI, vol. 1(3), pages 1-13, September.
    18. Kimya, Mert, 2020. "Farsighted Objections and Maximality in One-to-one Matching Problems," Working Papers 2020-14, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    19. P. Jean-Jacques Herings & Ana Mauleon & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2023. "Social Rationalizability with Mediation," Dynamic Games and Applications, Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 440-461, June.
    20. Mariya Teteryatnikova, 2021. "Cautious farsighted stability in network formation games with streams of payoffs," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 50(4), pages 829-865, December.

    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:spr:snopef:v:5:y:2024:i:4:d:10.1007_s43069-024-00375-z. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.