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arXiv · 2402.06626

Computing Optimal Commitments to Strategies and Outcome-Conditional Utility Transfers

Nathaniel Sauerberg·Caspar Oesterheld
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Abstract

Prior work has studied the computational complexity of computing optimal strategies to commit to in Stackelberg or leadership games, where a leader commits to a strategy which is observed by one or more followers. We extend this setting to one where the leader can additionally commit to outcome-conditional utility transfers. We characterize the computational complexity of finding optimal strategies in normal-form and Bayesian games, giving a mix of efficient algorithms and NP-hardness results. Finally, we allow the leader to also commit to a signaling scheme which induces a correlated equilibrium. In this setting, optimal commitments can be found in polynomial time for arbitrarily many players.

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Nathaniel Sauerberg, Caspar Oesterheld. 2024-02-09. Computing Optimal Commitments to Strategies and Outcome-Conditional Utility Transfers. https://arxiv.org/abs/2402.06626

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