Flows and decompositions of games: harmonic and potential games
From MaRDI portal
Publication:2884285
Abstract: In this paper we introduce a novel flow representation for finite games in strategic form. This representation allows us to develop a canonical direct sum decomposition of an arbitrary game into three components, which we refer to as the potential, harmonic and nonstrategic components. We analyze natural classes of games that are induced by this decomposition, and in particular, focus on games with no harmonic component and games with no potential component. We show that the first class corresponds to the well-known potential games. We refer to the second class of games as harmonic games, and study the structural and equilibrium properties of this new class of games. Intuitively, the potential component of a game captures interactions that can equivalently be represented as a common interest game, while the harmonic part represents the conflicts between the interests of the players. We make this intuition precise, by studying the properties of these two classes, and show that indeed they have quite distinct and remarkable characteristics. For instance, while finite potential games always have pure Nash equilibria, harmonic games generically never do. Moreover, we show that the nonstrategic component does not affect the equilibria of a game, but plays a fundamental role in their efficiency properties, thus decoupling the location of equilibria and their payoff-related properties. Exploiting the properties of the decomposition framework, we obtain explicit expressions for the projections of games onto the subspaces of potential and harmonic games. This enables an extension of the properties of potential and harmonic games to "nearby" games. We exemplify this point by showing that the set of approximate equilibria of an arbitrary game can be characterized through the equilibria of its projection onto the set of potential games.
Recommendations
Cited in
(57)- Dynamics in near-potential games
- Mean curvature, threshold dynamics, and phase field theory on finite graphs
- Decentralized bandwidth control subject to two-layer constraints
- Ordinal potentials in smooth games
- On three-player potential games
- Agency, potential and contagion
- Best-response dynamics in two-person random games with correlated payoffs
- With potential games, which outcome is better?
- On potential equations of finite games
- Hodge decomposition and the Shapley value of a cooperative game
- Orthogonal decomposition of incomplete-profile finite game space
- Graphical potential games
- The geometry of synchronization problems and learning group actions
- Exploring multi-potential games in strategic form: a graph theoretic approach
- A survey on cross-discipline of control and game
- Flow sharing and bankruptcy games
- The network HHD: quantifying cyclic competition in trait-performance models of tournaments
- An application of optimization theory to the study of equilibria for games: a survey
- The buck-passing game
- Weighted and near weighted potential games with application to game theoretic control
- Algebraic verification of finite group-based potential games with vector payoffs
- Analysis of crowdsourced sampling strategies for HodgeRank with sparse random graphs
- On best-response dynamics in potential games
- Existence of equilibria in countable games: an algebraic approach
- What Are Higher-Order Networks?
- Robustness of dynamics in games: a contraction mapping decomposition approach
- Pure Nash equilibria and best-response dynamics in random games
- Games, graphs and Kirchhoff laws
- Similarity Suppresses Cyclicity: Why Similar Competitors Form Hierarchies
- scientific article; zbMATH DE number 7064064 (Why is no real title available?)
- Towards multi‐agent reinforcement learning‐driven over‐the‐counter market simulations
- To catch a stag: identifying payoff- and risk-dominance effects in coordination games
- Fashion and homophily
- Decompositions of finite games: from weighted inner product to standard inner product
- On skew-symmetric games
- Game-theoretic multi-agent motion planning in a mixed environment
- Dynamic potential games: the discrete-time stochastic case
- On coset weighted potential game
- On basis and pure Nash equilibrium of finite pure harmonic games
- A comprehensive survey on STP approach to finite games
- A survey on decomposition of finite strategic-form games
- Strategic decompositions of normal form games: zero-sum games and potential games
- Recent advances in optimization and game theoretic control for networked systems
- On potential equations of finite symmetric games
- Classification by decomposition: a novel approach to classification of symmetric \(2\times 2\) games
- Directed graphical structure, Nash equilibrium, and potential games
- From Boolean game to potential game
- Regular potential games
- Zeroth-order feedback optimization for cooperative multi-agent systems
- Verification of coset weighted potential game and its application to optimisation of multi-agent systems
- Evolutionary potential games on lattices
- Incomplete-profile potential games
- Hodge Laplacians on graphs
- Decomposition of games: some strategic considerations
- Evolution of social networks
- Modeling, analysis, and dynamics of Bayesian games via matrix-based method
- Stackelberg-Nash equilibrium and quasi harmonic games
This page was built for publication: Flows and decompositions of games: harmonic and potential games
Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q2884285)
