The Empirical Promise of Game Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Debs
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
International Security ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Scientific Enterprise ◽  
Qualitative Evidence ◽  
Comparison Approach ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Solid Foundation

Game theory is a set of mathematical tools used to analyze the strategic interaction between decision makers. Proponents of game theory have offered different perspectives about its potential benefits in the study of politics: It is a rigorous apparatus that can offer a solid foundation for the scientific enterprise; it offers predictions that could be tested with statistical analysis; it can account for the essence of unique cases and could be tested with qualitative evidence. Critics of game theory, in political science and international security specifically, argued in the 1990s that it had generated few empirical insights. Two decades later, game-theoretic approaches to international security remain a robust research program, but their prevalence remains limited. It is important to evaluate the potential benefits of game theory and the contributions that it has made to international security, so as to devise appropriate strategies to maximize its empirical purchase. The controlled comparison approach, using qualitative evidence on a medium number of cases, appears especially promising.

Fuzzy Optimal Approaches to 2-P Cooperative Games

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-35
Author(s):  
Mubarak S. Al-Mutairi
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Favourable Outcome ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Fuzzy Approach ◽  
Fuzzy Information ◽  
Missing Information ◽  
Conflicting Objectives ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Classical Game ◽  
Classical Game Theory

In game theory, two or more parties need to make decisions with fully or partially conflicting objectives. In situations where reaching a more favourable outcome depends upon cooperation between the two conflicting parties, some of the mental and subjective attitudes of the decision makers must be considered. While the decision to cooperate with others bears some risks due to uncertainty and loss of control, not cooperating means giving up potential benefits. In practice, decisions must be made under risk, uncertainty, and incomplete or fuzzy information. Because it is able to work well with vague, ambiguous, imprecise, noisy or missing information, the fuzzy approach is effective for modeling such multicriteria conflicting situations. The well-known game of Prisoner's Dilemma, which reflects a basic situation in which one must decide whether to cooperate or not with a competitor, is systematically solved using a fuzzy approach. The fuzzy procedure is used to incorporate some of the subjective attitudes of the decision makers that are difficult to model using classical game theory. Furthermore, it permits researchers to consider the subjective attitudes of the decision makers and make better decisions in subjective, uncertain, and risky situations.

scholarly journals Papers on pragmasemantics

2009 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 216
Author(s):  
Anton Benz ◽  
Reinhard Blutner
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Natural Language ◽  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Cognitive Skills ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Mathematical Framework ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Bidirectional Optimality Theory ◽  
Game Theoretic Pragmatics

Optimality theory as used in linguistics (Prince & Smolensky, 1993/2004; Smolensky & Legendre, 2006) and cognitive psychology (Gigerenzer & Selten, 2001) is a theoretical framework that aims to integrate constraint based knowledge representation systems, generative grammar, cognitive skills, and aspects of neural network processing. In the last years considerable progress was made to overcome the artificial separation between the disciplines of linguistic on the one hand which are mainly concerned with the description of natural language competences and the psychological disciplines on the other hand which are interested in real language performance. The semantics and pragmatics of natural language is a research topic that is asking for an integration of philosophical, linguistic, psycholinguistic aspects, including its neural underpinning. Especially recent work on experimental pragmatics (e.g. Noveck & Sperber, 2005; Garrett & Harnish, 2007) has shown that real progress in the area of pragmatics isn’t possible without using data from all available domains including data from language acquisition and actual language generation and comprehension performance. It is a conceivable research programme to use the optimality theoretic framework in order to realize the integration. Game theoretic pragmatics is a relatively young development in pragmatics. The idea to view communication as a strategic interaction between speaker and hearer is not new. It is already present in Grice' (1975) classical paper on conversational implicatures. What game theory offers is a mathematical framework in which strategic interaction can be precisely described. It is a leading paradigm in economics as witnessed by a series of Nobel prizes in the field. It is also of growing importance to other disciplines of the social sciences. In linguistics, its main applications have been so far pragmatics and theoretical typology. For pragmatics, game theory promises a firm foundation, and a rigor which hopefully will allow studying pragmatic phenomena with the same precision as that achieved in formal semantics. The development of game theoretic pragmatics is closely connected to the development of bidirectional optimality theory (Blutner, 2000). It can be easily seen that the game theoretic notion of a Nash equilibrium and the optimality theoretic notion of a strongly optimal form-meaning pair are closely related to each other. The main impulse that bidirectional optimality theory gave to research on game theoretic pragmatics stemmed from serious empirical problems that resulted from interpreting the principle of weak optimality as a synchronic interpretation principle. In this volume, we have collected papers that are concerned with several aspects of game and optimality theoretic approaches to pragmatics.  

The Informal Game Theory in Hume's Account of Convention

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Vanderschraaf
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Economic Theory ◽  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Interaction ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
General Account ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Number Of Authors ◽  
General Conditions

Hume is rightly credited with giving a brilliant, and perhaps the best, account of justice as convention. Hume's importance as a forerunner of modern economics has also long been recognized. However, most of Hume's readers have not fully appreciated how closely Hume's analysis of convention foreshadows a particular branch of economic theory, namely, game theory. Starting with the work of Barry (1965), Runciman and Sen (1965) and Lewis (1969), there has been a flowering of literature on the informal game-theoretic insights to be found in classics of political philosophy such as Hobbes (1651), Locke (1690), Hume (1740) and Rousseau (1755). A number of authors in this tradition, including Lewis (1969), Gauthier (1979), Mackie (1980), and Postema (1995), have identified passages in Hume which they interpret as giving informal examples of specific games. Yet, unlike his predecessors, Hobbes and Locke, Hume does much more than present examples which have a game-theoretic structure. In his account of convention, Hume gives general conditions which characterize the resolution of social interaction problems, and in the examples he uses to illustrate this account, Hume outlines several different methods by which agents can arrive at such a resolution. Hume's general account of convention and his explanations of the origins of particular conventions together constitute a theory of strategic interaction, which is precisely what game theory aspires to be.

Game Theory and the Future of International Security

2018 ◽  
pp. 178-192
Author(s):  
Andrew H. Kydd
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Security ◽  
Dynamic Models ◽  
Evolutionary Game ◽  
Formal Theory ◽  
The Future ◽  
Cost Of War ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
The Cost

Game theory can help guide our thinking about the future of international relations in three ways. Static models can help us understand the effects of varying exogenous parameters, like the cost of war, the level of transparency, or the returns from trade. Dynamic models help us understand how fears or hopes for the future can affect present behavior, and how present behavior constrains or enables future options. Finally, evolutionary game theoretic models can represent processes that unfold over longer time horizons, helping us understand the rise of international cooperation and the decline of war. Given that we have no data on the future, formal theory is especially useful in guiding our speculation.

scholarly journals Integrating Learning with Game Theory for Societal Challenges

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Fang
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Large Games ◽  
Game Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Multiple Decision Makers ◽  
Societal Challenges ◽  
Computational Game Theory ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Real World Problems

Real-world problems often involve more than one decision makers, each with their own goals or preferences. While game theory is an established paradigm for reasoning strategic interactions between multiple decision-makers, its applicability in practice is often limited by the intractability of computing equilibria in large games, and the fact that the game parameters are sometimes unknown and the players are often not perfectly rational. On the other hand, machine learning and reinforcement learning have led to huge successes in various domains and can be leveraged to overcome the limitations of the game-theoretic analysis. In this paper, we introduce our work on integrating learning with computational game theory for addressing societal challenges such as security and sustainability.

Game theory can build higher mental processes from lower ones1

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 16-18
Author(s):  
George Ainslie
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Mental Functions ◽  
Reward Seeking ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Game Theoretic ◽  
Higher Mental Functions

The question of reductionism is an obstacle to unification. Many behavioral scientists who study the more complex or higher mental functions avoid regarding them as selected by motivation. Game-theoretic models in which complex processes grow from the strategic interaction of elementary reward-seeking processes can overcome the mechanical feel of earlier reward-based models. Three examples are briefly described.

scholarly journals The anti-mercenary norm and the market for combat force

2021 ◽  
pp. 002070202199451
Author(s):  
Ulrich Petersohn
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Strategic Interaction ◽  
Strategic Interactions ◽  
Norm Violation ◽  
Reputational Costs

Since 2013, combat services have been increasingly exchanged on the market. This development is puzzling since the practice emerged despite an anti-mercenary norm banning such services, and without any revision of the norm. The article argues that the combat market is not a deliberate design, but the result of strategic interaction. For some, compliance with the anti-mercenary norm is the best strategy, while for others, violating the norm is best. However, once the norm violation occurs, it is in the interest of all actors to maintain a façade of compliance. Non-compliant actors benefit from the combat services, and compliant actors do not have to engage in costly sanctioning of the norm violation, and avoid the reputational costs associated with non-enforcement. The article employs game theory to investigate the strategic interactions of actors across 11 combat contracts from 2013 to 2019.

Measuring Benefits of Rural and Small Urban Transit in Greater Minnesota

2021 ◽  
pp. 036119812199001
Author(s):  
Jeremy Mattson ◽  
Del Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Economic Impacts ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Labor Income ◽  
Urban Transit ◽  
Societal Benefits ◽  
Transit Services ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Transit Agencies ◽  
Benefit Cost

The objective of this research was to measure the benefits of rural and small urban transit services in Minnesota. The study accomplished this by first identifying, describing, and classifying the potential benefits of transit. Second, a method was developed to measure these benefits. Where possible, benefits were quantified in dollar values. Other benefits that could not be quantified in monetary terms were either quantified in another way or described qualitatively. The study included an analysis of societal benefits and economic impacts within local communities. Third, the developed method was applied to a series of six case studies across Greater Minnesota. Data were collected through onboard rider surveys for each of the six transit agencies. Total benefits and benefit-cost ratios were estimated for the six transit agencies—all showed benefits that exceeded costs—and results were generalized to Greater Minnesota. Economic impacts were also estimated showing the effect on jobs, labor income, and value added. This research provides information to assess the benefits of public spending on transit, which gives decision makers the data needed to inform investment decisions.

scholarly journals Hypergame Theory: A Model for Conflict, Misperception, and Deception

Game Theory ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 2015 ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas S. Kovach ◽  
Alan S. Gibson ◽  
Gary B. Lamont
Keyword(s):  
Game Theory ◽  
Decision Theory ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
Intentional Deception ◽  
Broad Overview

When dealing with conflicts, game theory and decision theory can be used to model the interactions of the decision-makers. To date, game theory and decision theory have received considerable modeling focus, while hypergame theory has not. A metagame, known as a hypergame, occurs when one player does not know or fully understand all the strategies of a game. Hypergame theory extends the advantages of game theory by allowing a player to outmaneuver an opponent and obtaining a more preferred outcome with a higher utility. The ability to outmaneuver an opponent occurs in the hypergame because the different views (perception or deception) of opponents are captured in the model, through the incorporation of information unknown to other players (misperception or intentional deception). The hypergame model more accurately provides solutions for complex theoretic modeling of conflicts than those modeled by game theory and excels where perception or information differences exist between players. This paper explores the current research in hypergame theory and presents a broad overview of the historical literature on hypergame theory.

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