Surveys In Game Theory And Related Topics

Surveys in Game Theory and Related Topics

Chapters in Game Theory

Chapters in Game Theory has been written on the occasion of the 65th birthday of Stef Tijs, who can be regarded as the godfather of game theory in the Netherlands. The contributors all are indebted to Stef Tijs, as former Ph.D. students or otherwise. The book contains fourteen chapters on a wide range of subjects. Some of these can be considered surveys while other chapters present new results: most contributions can be positioned somewhere in between these categories. The topics covered include: cooperative stochastic games; noncooperative stochastic games; sequencing games; games arising form linear (semi-) infinite programming problems; network formation, costs and potential games; potentials and consistency in transferable utility games; the nucleolus and equilibrium prices; population uncertainty and equilibrium selection; cost sharing; centrality in social networks; extreme points of the core; equilibrium sets of bimatrix games; game theory and the market; and transfer procedures for nontransferable utility games. Both editors did their Ph.D with Stef Tijs, while he was affiliated with the mathematics department of the University of Nijmegen.

Cooperative Games, Solutions and Applications

The study of the theory of games was started in Von Neumann (1928), but the development of the theory of games was accelerated after the publication of the classical book "Theory of games and economic behavior" by Von Neumann and Morgenstern (1944). As an initial step, the theory of games aims to put situations of conflict and cooperation into mathematical models. In the second and final step, the resulting models are analysed on the basis of equitable and mathematical reasonings. The conflict and/or cooperative situation in question is generally due to the interaction between two or more individuals (players). Their interaction may lead up to several potential payoffs over which each player has his own preferences. Any player attempts to achieve his largest possible payoff, but the other players may also exert their influence on the realization of some potential payoff. As already mentioned, the theory of games consists of two parts, a modelling part and a solution part. Concerning the modelling part, the mathematical models of conflict and cooperative situations are described. The description of the models includes the rules, the strategy space of any player, potential payoffs to the players, the preferences of each player over the set of all potential payoffs, etc. According to the rules, it is either permitted or forbidden that the players communicate with one another in order to make binding agreements regarding their mutual actions.