Work

The Explanatory Relevance of Nash Equilibrium: One-Dimensional Chaos in Boundedly Rational Learning

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Game theory is often used to explain behavior. Such explanations often proceed by demonstrating that the behavior in question is a Nash equilibrium. Agents are in Nash equilibrium if each agent’s strategy maximizes her payoff given her opponents’ strategies. Nash equilibriums are fundamentally static, but it is usually assumed that equilibriums will be the outcome of a dynamic process of learning or evolution. This article demonstrates that, even in the most simple setting, this need not be true. In two-strategy games with just a single equilibrium, a family of imitative learning dynamics does not lead to equilibrium.

Source: Philosophy of Science

DOI: 10.1086/673731

Author: Elliott Wagner

Institution: Kansas State University

Language: English

Topic: Game Theory and Applications

Subfield: Management Science and Operations Research

Field: Decision Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Science Foundation

Award: Collaborative Research: Dynamic Perspectives on Costs and Conflict in Signaling Interactions