Comment on Distribution Equilibria Yuval Heller School of Mathematical Sciences, Tel-Aviv University, P.O. box: 39040, Tel-Aviv 69978, Israel. Phone: 972-3-640-5386. Fax: 972-3-640-9357. Email: [email protected]

Abstract Sorin (1998, mimeo) presented the notion of distribution equilibrium as a correlated equilibrium in which the expected payo of each agent is independent of his signal, and motivated it in population games. We say that a mediator is weak if players have the ability to restart the mediation process after receiving their recommend actions. We demonstrate situations where mediators are weak, relate it to pre-play communication, and use it as a novel rationale for distribution equilibrium.

1

Introduction

A decade ago Sorin (1998) presented the notion of distribution equilibrium as a correlated equilibrium in which the expected payo of each agent is independent of his signal. In Heller (2010) we generalized this notion for dynamic games with normal-form correlation, requiring that the expected payo of each agent before the game starts is independent of his signal, and called it constant-expectation correlated equilibrium.

Originally, Sorin motivated the notion of distribution equilibrium by population games (see also Heller, 2010, Section 6). In this comment we present the notion of weak mediators, and use it as a new rationale for distribution equilibrium. Roughly speaking, a mediator is weak if a player who receives a bad recommended action (which induces a low expected payo ) has the ability to restart the mediation process.

This comment includes three parts. Section 2 presents a few examples and basic properties of distribution equilibrium. Section 3 presents the notion of weak mediators, and demonstrate why such mediators are limited in their ability to implement non-distribution correlated equilibria. Finally, Section 4 relates pre-play communication among the players with weak mediators.

October 6, 2010

2

Properties and Examples

We briey discuss some of the properties of distribution equilibrium in normal-form games. First, every Nash equilibrium is a distribution equilibrium. Second, unlike the set of correlated equilibria, the set of distribution equilibria is not convex, even for nite games, as demonstrated in the battle of the sexes game illustrated in Table 1: both

(T, R)

(B, L)

and

are distribution equilibria, but

[0.5 (T, R) , 0.5 (B, L)]

is not (the payo

of a player is either 1 or 2, depending on his signal). Table 1 Battle of the Sexes - a Normal-Form Two-Player Game

L

R

T

(0, 0) (2, 1)

B

(1, 2) (0, 0)

The next example (Table 2, adapted from Moulin and Vial, 1978) demonstrates that distribution equilibrium can induce payos that dominate the payos of Nash equilibria. The left table describes the payo matrix. In this example, there is a unique Nash

(1/3, 1/3, 1/3)

equilibrium in which each player plays

with payo

4/3.

The symmetric

distribution equilibrium, which is described in the right table, induces payo 2, and it dominates Nash equilibrium. Finally, Table 3 (left table) presents a variant of the Chicken game (see, Aumann,

D,P ), (P,D ) and (P,P ) with payos (0,3), (3,0)

1974). There are three pure equilibria, (

and (0,0), respectively. In every distribution equilibrium, the payo to both players is at 2 most 4 . Indeed, if, e.g., the row player does not play C , then at least one of the players 3 with probability 1 (otherwise the column player would deviate and play

P

with probability 1) and the payo to both players is at most 3. If the row player plays

C

must play

P

with positive probability, then the probability of playing probability of playing of

C

(C, D)

must be at least half the

(C, C)

(otherwise the row player would deviate and play 2 ), and the payo to the row player is at most 4 . 3

D instead

The middle table presents the best distribution equilibrium in this game - a symmetric 2 Nash equilibrium that induces payo 4 to both players; each player plays with proba3

C

Table 2 2-player Game with a Nash-Dominating Distribution Equilibrium

2-Player Game

Distribution Equilibrium

A

B

C

A

B

C

A

(0, 0)

(1, 3)

(3, 1)

A

0

1/6

1/6

B

(3, 1)

(0, 0)

(1, 3)

B

1/6

0

1/6

C

(1, 3)

(3, 1)

(0, 0)

C

1/6

1/6

0

2

Table 3 Variant of Chicken Game: Best Distribution and Correlated Equilibria

Chicken Game

C C D P

D

Best Distribution Eq.

P

(6, 6) (2, 7) (0, 0) (7, 2) (0, 0) (0, 3) (0, 0) (3, 0) (0, 0)

C D P

C

D

4/9

2/9

0

2/9

1/9

0

0

0

0

Correlated Eq.

P C D P

C

D

P

1/2

1/4

0

1/4

0

0

0

0

0

2 1 and D with probability . The right table presents a symmetric non-distribution 3 3 1 correlated equilibrium that induces payo 5 to both players, which strictly dominates all 4 distribution equilibria. Because this latter correlated equilibrium is preferred by both playbility

ers to all distribution equilibria, one may wonder what is the advantage of a distribution equilibrium in this example. We answer this question in the following two sections.

3

Weak Mediators

One of the leading interpretations of a correlation device is a mediator. A mediator is a trusted third party that chooses an action prole according to a known probability (correlated) distribution, and privately informs each player of his part of the prole (a recommended action). The probability distribution is a correlated equilibrium if it is bestreply for each player to follow his recommended action, given that all other players follow their recommended actions. In some situations, mediators are

weak in the sense that a player who receives a bad

recommended action (which induces a low expected payo ) has the ability to restart the mediation process. Some examples for such situations are:



A married couple (say, Alice and Bob) goes to a marriage counselor. If Alice is discontent from the recommendations the counselor gave her, she may ask Bob to go to another counselor. It is plausible that Bob would agree to this request, which restarts the mediation process.



Two countries in dispute ask a powerful third country to suggest an outline for a peace conference. Such an outline may include condential parts, such as a monetary aid given for one side for his agreement to participate in the conference. The third country condentially informs each disputing country on its part of the outline. If both countries agree, the suggested outline is implemented and the peace process begins. Otherwise, the outline is canceled, and the disputing countries are back in the starting position (they may continue the dispute, or initiate another peace initiative with a new mediator).

In such situations, distribution equilibria have an important advantage: they can be implemented by weak mediators without having any player wishing to restart the mediation process. On the other hand, the implementation of non-distribution correlated equilibrium

3

is limited by players' ability to restart the mediation. Consider the following simple model for weak mediation. After each player receives his recommended action, he has to choose whether to accept the mediation's outcome (while still having the ability to deviate from the recommended action when playing the game) or to restart the mediation process. If at least one player chooses the second alternative, then all players receive a small negative initialization payo

−,

and the mediator randomly

chooses a new action prole. It is immediate to see that the only correlated strategy proles that can be implemented as Nash equilibria of an extended game with pre-play weak mediation without paying initializations costs, are distribution equilibria. For example, consider the implementation of the best symmetric (non-distribution) correlated equilibrium in the Chicken game (Table 3) by weak mediation. For simplicity, we only consider implementation as stationary equilibria of the extended game with weak mediators. That is, we require that the probability in which each player restarts the mediation process depends only on his current recommended action, and not on the history of past initializations of the process. By appropriate adaptations to our weak mediation model, one could extend our result to deal with implementation as sequential equilibria of the extended game. One can see that due to initialization costs, the best symmetric payo that can be induced by implementing this prole as a stationary equilibrium in the extended game with 2 weak mediation is not 5.25 but only approximately 4 (which is equal to the payo of the 3 best distribution equilibrium). This is because in any such implementation a player that receives a recommended action

C

would restart the mediation with probability

q

strictly

between 0 and 1. Such a player must be indierent between not restarting (obtaining 2 payo 4 ) and restarting (obtaining the future payo minus small penalty −). This 3 2 implies that the future payo is 4 + , the probability q is close to 1 (assuming that  is 3 2 small enough), and the expected payo is approximately 4 . 3

4

Pre-play Cheap-Talk

The weak mediation rationale can be also applicable to games with pre-play communication. Ben-Porath (1998) and Heller (2010), among others, demonstrate that cheap-talk protocols can imitate mediators. We claim that in some situations one should consider these imitated mediators as weak mediators. Specically, it seems plausible to assume in the leading example that at least some of the traders (e.g., the pre-play communication chairman) has some, possibly limited, ability to restart the talk in case they received a bad signal. The following 3-player game (Table 4), which is adapted from Maschler, Solan, Zamir (2008, Example 8.2), demonstrates the above argument. Player I is the row player, Player

r c or l ). Observe that the unique

II is the column player, and Player III chooses a matrix ( ,

4

Table 4 3-Player Game

l L T B

c R

L T B

(0, 1, 3) (0, 0, 0) (1, 1, 1) (1, 0, 0)

r R

(1.99, 1.99, 2) (0, 0, 0) (1.99, 2, 0)

(2, 2, 2)

T B

L

R

(0, 0, 0)

(0, 0, 0)

(1, 1, 1) (0.5, 0.5, 3)

(1, 1, 1) as can be seen by the following arguments: (L, c) cannot be played with probability 1 in equilibrium; this implies that T , which is weakly dominated by B , is not played in equilibrium; this implies that c is not played in equilibrium as it is strongly dominated by r (given that T is not played); This implies that L strongly dominates R (given that T and c are not played); Thus only (B, L, l) and (B, L, r) are played in a Nash equilibrium, and both yield payo (1, 1, 1). Nash equilibrium payo of this game is

This game admits a non-distribution correlated equilibrium

(0.5 (T, L, c) , 0.5 (B, R, c))

with payo

(1.995, 1.995, 2),

which dominates the Nash payo. It can be implemented by simple pre-

play communication: the imitated mediator tosses a fair coin and recommends players I and II to play

(T, L)

or

(B, R)

based on the result; player III plays

c.

The fact that

the payos of players I and II depend on their signal, may make it harder to implement this equilibrium with cheap-talk. If the result of the toss is such that players I and II have to play

(T, L)

and receive payo

1.99,

they have an incentive to restart the process,

and have the imitated weak mediator tossing the coin again (hoping to have receive the higher payo

2).

(B, R) and

Two reasons why players I and II may have the ability to

restart the mediation process are: 1) it might be that only players I and II participate in the communication (e.g., they may simply toss the coin themselves), and 2) player 3 is not damaged from the second tossing as his payo remains 2. If the imitated mediator is indeed weak, it seems unlikely that players I and II would play

(0.5 (T, L) , 0.5 (B, R)),

which is required by the equilibrium. The above correlated equilibrium can be slightly changed to become the following

(0.495 (T, L, c) , 0.490 (B, R, c) , 0.005 (T, L, r) , 0.010 (B, R, r)), (1.97, 1.97, 2). This can be induced by an imitated weak mediator

distribution equilibrium: which induces payo

as follows : the mediator tosses a fair coin and and recommends players I and II to play

(T, L)

or

(B, R)

based on the result; with small probability, which depends on the coin

result (0.010/0.5 or 0.005/0.5), the mediator recommends player III to play

r

and not

c.

References

Heller, Y. 2010. Sequential Correlated Equilibria in Stopping Games. http://www.tau.ac.il/~helleryu/correlated-stopping.pdf Maschler Michael, Eilon Solan, Shmuel Zamir, 2008.

5

Game Theory. HUJI Magnes Press,

Jerusalem (Hebrew). Moulin, H., J. P. Vial. 1978. Strategically Zero-Sum Games: The Class of Games Whose Completely Mixed Equilibria Cannot be Improved Upon,

Theory

International Journal of Game

7 201-221.

Sorin, S. 1998. Distribution equilibrium I: denition and equilibrium. Papers 9835, Paris X - Nanterre, U.F.R. de Sc. Ec. Gest. Maths Infor.

6

Comment on Distribution Equilibria

Oct 6, 2010 - Fax: 972-3-640-9357. Email: [email protected]. Abstract ... Section 2 presents a few examples and basic prop- erties of distribution ... The middle table presents the best distribution equilibrium in this game - a symmetric.

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