Nash Equilibria of Games When Players' Preferences Are Quasi-Transitive

Basu, Kaushik ; Pattanaik, Prasanta K.

World Bank Group, Washington, DC

关键词: CALL;    DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS;    DEVELOPMENT POLICY;    ECONOMIC THEORY;    ETHICS;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7037
RP-ID  :  WPS7037

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

Much of game theory is founded on theassumption that individual players are endowed withpreferences that can be represented by a real-valued utilityfunction. However, in reality human preferences are oftennot transitive. This is especially true for the indifferencerelation, which can lead an individual to make a series ofchoices which in their totality would be viewed as erroneousby the same individual. There is a substantial literaturethat raises intricate questions about individual liberty andthe role of government intervention in such contexts. Theaim of this paper is not to go into these ethical mattersbut to provide a formal structure for such analysis bycharacterizing games where individual preferences arequasi-transitive. The paper identifies a set of axioms whichare sufficient for the existence of Nash equilibria in such 'games.'