A note on discontinuity and approximate equilibria in games with infinitely many players

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Peleg (1969) showed that it is possible for a game with countably many players and finitely many pure strategies to have no Nash equilibrium. In his example not only Nash, but even perfect ϵ-equilibrium fails to exist. However, the example is based on tail utility functions, and these have infinitely many discontinuity points. I demonstrate non-existence of perfect ϵ-equilibrium under a milder form of discontinuity: I construct a game with countably many players, finitely many pure strategies and no perfect ϵ-equilibrium, in which one player has a utility function with a single discontinuity point, and the utility of every other player is not only continuous, but depends on finitely many coordinates.

Original languageEnglish
Article number109267
JournalEconomics Letters
Volume193
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 Elsevier B.V.

Keywords

  • Approximate equilibrium
  • Discontinuous games
  • Equilibrium non-existence
  • Infinite games
  • Tail events

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Finance
  • Economics and Econometrics

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'A note on discontinuity and approximate equilibria in games with infinitely many players'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this