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arXiv · 2309.14618

Communication games, sequential equilibrium, and mediators

Ivan Geffner·Joseph Y. Halpern
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Abstract

We consider $k$-resilient sequential equilibria, strategy profiles where no player in a coalition of at most $k$ players believes that it can increase its utility by deviating, regardless of its local state. We prove that all $k$-resilient sequential equilibria that can be implemented with a trusted mediator can also be implemented without the mediator in a synchronous system of $n$ players if $n >3k$. In asynchronous systems, where there is no global notion of time and messages may take arbitrarily long to get to their recipient, we prove that a $k$-resilient sequential equilibrium with a mediator can be implemented without the mediator if $n > 4k$. These results match the lower bounds given by Abraham, Dolev, and Halpern (2008) and Geffner and Halpern (2023) for implementing a Nash equilibrium without a mediator (which are easily seen to apply to implementing a sequential equilibrium) and improve the results of Gerardi, who showed that, in the case that $k=1$, a sequential equilibrium can be implemented in synchronous systems if $n \ge 5$.

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Ivan Geffner, Joseph Y. Halpern. 2023-09-26. Communication games, sequential equilibrium, and mediators. https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.14618

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