IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-01533554.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

On the existence of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games

Author

Listed:
  • Rabia Nessah

    (LEM - Lille économie management - UMR 9221 - UA - Université d'Artois - UCL - Université catholique de Lille - Université de Lille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Guoqiang Tian

Abstract

This paper offers an equilibrium existence theorem in discontinuous games. We introduce a new notion of very weak continuity, called quasi-weak transfer continuity that guarantees the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium in compact and quasiconcave games. We also consider possible extensions and improvements of the main result. We present applications to show that our conditions allow for economically meaningful payoff discontinuities.

Suggested Citation

  • Rabia Nessah & Guoqiang Tian, 2015. "On the existence of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games," Post-Print hal-01533554, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01533554
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-015-0921-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Carmona, Guilherme, 2009. "An existence result for discontinuous games," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(3), pages 1333-1340, May.
    2. Paulo Barelli & Idione Meneghel, 2013. "A Note on the Equilibrium Existence Problem in Discontinuous Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(2), pages 813-824, March.
    3. Rabia Nessah & Guoqiang Tian, 2013. "Existence of Solution of Minimax Inequalities, Equilibria in Games and Fixed Points Without Convexity and Compactness Assumptions," Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Springer, vol. 157(1), pages 75-95, April.
    4. Tian, Guoqiang, 1992. "On the Existence of Equilibria in Generalized Games," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 20(3), pages 247-254.
    5. Roberts, John & Sonnenschein, Hugo, 1977. "On the Foundations of the Theory of Monopolistic Competition," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 45(1), pages 101-113, January.
    6. Simon, Leo K & Zame, William R, 1990. "Discontinuous Games and Endogenous Sharing Rules," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(4), pages 861-872, July.
    7. Matthew Jackson, 2009. "Non-existence of equilibrium in Vickrey, second-price, and English auctions," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 13(1), pages 137-145, April.
    8. Prokopovych, Pavlo & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2014. "On the existence of mixed strategy Nash equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 87-97.
    9. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2012. "A Unified Approach to Equilibrium Existence in Discontinuous Strategic Games," Post-Print halshs-00717135, HAL.
    10. Tian, Guoqiang & Zhou, Jianxin, 1995. "Transfer continuities, generalizations of the Weierstrass and maximum theorems: A full characterization," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 24(3), pages 281-303.
    11. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2012. "A Unified Approach to Equilibrium Existence in Discontinuous Strategic Games," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 12040, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    12. Pavlo Prokopovych, 2011. "On equilibrium existence in payoff secure games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(1), pages 5-16, September.
    13. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, I: Theory," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 1-26.
    14. Philip J. Reny, 1999. "On the Existence of Pure and Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 67(5), pages 1029-1056, September.
    15. Guilherme Carmona, 2011. "Understanding some recent existence results for discontinuous games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 48(1), pages 31-45, September.
    16. Paul Rothstein, 2007. "Discontinuous Payoffs, Shared Resources, and Games of Fiscal Competition: Existence of Pure Strategy Nash Equilibrium," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 9(2), pages 335-368, April.
    17. Partha Dasgupta & Eric Maskin, 1986. "The Existence of Equilibrium in Discontinuous Economic Games, II: Applications," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 53(1), pages 27-41.
    18. Leo K. Simon, 1987. "Games with Discontinuous Payoffs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 54(4), pages 569-597.
    19. Andrew McLennan & Paulo K. Monteiro & Rabee Tourky, 2011. "Games With Discontinuous Payoffs: A Strengthening of Reny's Existence Theorem," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(5), pages 1643-1664, September.
    20. Guoqiang Tian, 1993. "Necessary and Sufficient Conditions for Maximization of a Class of Preference Relations," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 949-958.
    21. Nessah, Rabia & Tian, Guoqiang, 2008. "Existence of Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," MPRA Paper 41206, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2010.
    22. Michael R. Baye & Guoqiang Tian & Jianxin Zhou, 1993. "Characterizations of the Existence of Equilibria in Games with Discontinuous and Non-quasiconcave Payoffs," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 60(4), pages 935-948.
    23. Nessah, Rabia, 2011. "Generalized weak transfer continuity and the Nash equilibrium," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(4-5), pages 659-662.
    24. Morgan, Jacqueline & Scalzo, Vincenzo, 2007. "Pseudocontinuous functions and existence of Nash equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(2), pages 174-183, February.
    25. Tian, Guoqiang, 2015. "On the existence of equilibria in games with arbitrary strategy spaces and preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 9-16.
    26. Vives, Xavier, 1990. "Nash equilibrium with strategic complementarities," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 305-321.
    27. Philip J. Reny, 2016. "Nash equilibrium in discontinuous games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(3), pages 553-569, March.
    28. Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1990. "Rationalizability, Learning, and Equilibrium in Games with Strategic Complementarities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1255-1277, November.
    29. Nishimura, Kazuo & Friedman, James, 1981. "Existence of Nash Equilibrium in n Person Games without Quasi-Concavity," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 22(3), pages 637-648, October.
    30. Tian, Guoqiang, 1992. "Existence of equilibrium in abstract economies with discontinuous payoffs and non-compact choice spaces," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 21(4), pages 379-388.
    31. Adib Bagh & Alejandro Jofre, 2006. "Reciprocal Upper Semicontinuity and Better Reply Secure Games: A Comment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(6), pages 1715-1721, November.
    32. Pavlo Prokopovych, 2013. "The single deviation property in games with discontinuous payoffs," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 53(2), pages 383-402, 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. Achille Basile & Vincenzo Scalzo, 2020. "Non-emptiness of the alpha-core: sufficient and necessary conditions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 49(4), pages 1143-1153, December.
    2. M. Ali Khan & Metin Uyanik, 2021. "The Yannelis–Prabhakar theorem on upper semi-continuous selections in paracompact spaces: extensions and applications," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(3), pages 799-840, April.
    3. Scalzo, Vincenzo, 2023. "Existence and stability results on the unilateral support equilibrium," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-9.
    4. Rabia Nessah, 2022. "Weakly continuous security and nash equilibrium," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 725-745, November.
    5. Ghislain Herman Demeze-Jouatsa & Roland Pongou & Jean-Baptiste Tondji, 2024. "Justice, inclusion, and incentives," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 36(2), pages 101-131, April.
    6. Vincenzo Scalzo, 2022. "Existence of alpha-core allocations in economies with non-ordered and discontinuous preferences," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 10(1), pages 1-12, May.
    7. Hanjoon Michael Jung, 2020. "Perfect regular equilibrium," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 16(4), pages 380-398, December.
    8. Philip J. Reny, 2016. "Introduction to the symposium on discontinuous games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(3), pages 423-429, March.
    9. Rabia Nessah, 2013. "Weakly Continuous Security in Discontinuous and Nonquasiconcave Games: Existence and Characterization," Working Papers 2013-ECO-20, IESEG School of Management.
    10. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau & Richard P. McLean, 2019. "Nash and Bayes–Nash equilibria in strategic-form games with intransitivities," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 68(4), pages 935-965, November.
    11. Ghislain H. Demeze-Jouatsa & Roland Pongou & Jean-Baptiste Tondji, 2021. "A Free and Fair Economy: A Game of Justice and Inclusion," Papers 2107.12870, arXiv.org.
    12. Philip J. Reny, 2020. "Nash Equilibrium in Discontinuous Games," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 439-470, August.
    13. Khan, M. Ali & McLean, Richard P. & Uyanik, Metin, 2024. "On constrained generalized games with action sets in non-locally-convex and non-Hausdorff topological vector spaces," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    14. Scalzo, Vincenzo, 2020. "Doubly Strong Equilibrium," MPRA Paper 99329, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. Wei He & Nicholas C. Yannelis, 2017. "A remark on discontinuous games with asymmetric information and ambiguity," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 5(1), pages 119-126, April.
    16. John Cotrina & Anton Svensson, 2021. "The finite intersection property for equilibrium problems," Journal of Global Optimization, Springer, vol. 79(4), pages 941-957, April.
    17. Vincenzo Scalzo, 2020. "On the uniqueness of Nash equilibrium in discontinuous ordinal and normal form games," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(1), pages 163-168, April.
    18. Demeze-Jouatsa, Ghislain-Herman & Pongou, Roland & Tondji, Jean-Baptiste, 2021. "A Free and Fair Economy: A Game of Justice and Inclusion," Center for Mathematical Economics Working Papers 653, Center for Mathematical Economics, Bielefeld University.
    19. Lu Yu, 2024. "Nash equilibria of quasisupermodular games," Papers 2406.13783, arXiv.org.

    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. Tian, Guoqiang, 2015. "On the existence of equilibria in games with arbitrary strategy spaces and preferences," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 9-16.
    2. Rabia Nessah, 2022. "Weakly continuous security and nash equilibrium," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(4), pages 725-745, November.
    3. Rabia Nessah, 2013. "Weakly Continuous Security in Discontinuous and Nonquasiconcave Games: Existence and Characterization," Working Papers 2013-ECO-20, IESEG School of Management.
    4. Nessah, Rabia & Tian, Guoqiang, 2008. "Existence of Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," MPRA Paper 41206, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Mar 2010.
    5. Guilherme Carmona & Konrad Podczeck, 2016. "Existence of Nash equilibrium in ordinal games with discontinuous preferences," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(3), pages 457-478, March.
    6. Carmona, Guilherme & Podczeck, Konrad, 2014. "Existence of Nash equilibrium in games with a measure space of players and discontinuous payoff functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 152(C), pages 130-178.
    7. Rabia Nessah & Guoqiang Tian, 2008. "The Existence of Equilibria in Discontinuous and Nonconvex Games," Working Papers 2008-ECO-14, IESEG School of Management, revised Mar 2010.
    8. Philip J. Reny, 2020. "Nash Equilibrium in Discontinuous Games," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 12(1), pages 439-470, August.
    9. He, Wei & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2015. "Discontinuous games with asymmetric information: An extension of Reny's existence theorem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 26-35.
    10. Prokopovych, Pavlo & Yannelis, Nicholas C., 2014. "On the existence of mixed strategy Nash equilibria," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 87-97.
    11. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2013. "On the Existence of Approximated Equilibria and Sharing-Rule Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) hal-00846143, HAL.
    12. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2013. "On the Existence of Approximated Equilibria and Sharing-Rule Equilibria in Discontinuous Games," Working Papers hal-00846143, HAL.
    13. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2012. "A Unified Approach to Equilibrium Existence in Discontinuous Strategic Games," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 12040, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    14. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2012. "A Unified Approach to Equilibrium Existence in Discontinuous Strategic Games," Post-Print halshs-00717135, HAL.
    15. Philippe Bich & Rida Laraki, 2012. "A Unified Approach to Equilibrium Existence in Discontinuous Strategic Games," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00717135, HAL.
    16. Pavlo Prokopovych, 2016. "Majorized correspondences and equilibrium existence in discontinuous games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(3), pages 541-552, March.
    17. Oriol Carbonell-Nicolau, 2015. "Further results on essential Nash equilibria in normal-form games," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 59(2), pages 277-300, June.
    18. Zhiwei Liu & Nicholas C. Yannelis, 2013. "On Discontinuous Games with Asymmetric Information," Economics Discussion Paper Series 1318, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    19. Scalzo, Vincenzo, 2020. "Doubly Strong Equilibrium," MPRA Paper 99329, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    20. Guilherme Carmona, 2016. "Reducible equilibrium properties: comments on recent existence results," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 61(3), pages 431-455, March.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discontinuous games; Quasi-weak transfer continuity; Various notions of transfer continuity; Nash equilibrium;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C72 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Noncooperative Games
    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium

    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:hal:journl:hal-01533554. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.