ACO Distinguished Lecture Series

Sergiu Hart

Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Game Dynamics and Equilibria


4:30 pm, Klaus 1116, refreshments at 4:00PM in the Atrium


A poster can be downloaded from http://www.aco.gatech.edu/colloq/


The concept of "strategic equilibrium," where each player's strategy is
optimal against those of the other players, was introduced by John Nash
in his Ph.D. thesis in 1950. Throughout the years, Nash equilibrium has
had a most significant impact in economics and many other areas.

However, more than 60 years later, its dynamic foundations - how are
equilibria reached in long-term interactions - are still not well
established.

In this talk we will overview a body of work of the last decade on
dynamical systems in multi-player environments. On the one hand, the
natural informational restriction that each participant may not know the
payoffs and utilities of the other participants - "uncoupledness" -

turns out to severely limit the possibilities to converge to Nash
equilibria. On the other hand, there are simple adaptive heuristics -
such as "regret matching" - that lead in the long run to correlated
equilibria, a concept that embodies full rationality. We will also
mention connections to behavioral and neurobiological studies, to
computer science concepts, and to engineering applications.