Limiting distributions of the number of pure strategy Nash equilibria in \(n\)-person games (Q2277378)

The author studies the number of pure Nash equilibria in a ``random'' \(n\)-person game. This game is defined as the classical noncooperative \(n\)-person game, in which a player \(k\), \(1\leq k\leq n\), has \(m_ k\) pure strategies, and his preferences over all of the \(M=\Pi m_ k\) possible outcomes is randomly chosen with the help of a random drawing of \(M\) numbers from \(1,2,\dots,M\). Here, according to standard convention, the higher the number associated with an outcome, the more the player prefers it. Additionally, it is assumed that the players choose their preferences independently of each other. The author investigates two cases of the model related to the random drawing with and without replacement. It is shown for both cases that the distribution of the number of pure Nash equilibrium in such games approaches the Poisson distribution with mean 1 as \(m_ k\to +\infty\) for at least two \(k\)'s.