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Distributed iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies

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Abstract

We characterize epistemic consequences of truthful communication among rational agents in a game-theoretic setting. To this end we introduce normal-form games equipped with an interaction structure, which specifies which groups of players can communicate their preferences with each other. We then focus on a specific form of interaction, namely a distributed form of iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies (IESDS), driven by communication among the agents. We study the outcome of IESDS after some (possibly all) messages about players’ preferences have been sent. The main result of the paper, Theorem 4, provides an epistemic justification of this form of IESDS.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CIMS, New York University, 715 Broadway, Room 1010, New York, NY, 10003, USA

    Andreas Witzel

  2. CWI, Science Park 123, 1098 XG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Krzysztof R. Apt

  3. Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Room 213, Wolfson Building, Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QD, UK

    Jonathan A. Zvesper

Authors
  1. Andreas Witzel
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  2. Krzysztof R. Apt
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  3. Jonathan A. Zvesper
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andreas Witzel.

Additional information

Andreas Witzel and Jonathan A. Zvesper were supported by a GLoRiClass fellowship funded by the European Commission (Early Stage Research Training Mono-Host Fellowship MEST-CT-2005-020841). Most of this work was done at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands.

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Witzel, A., Apt, K.R. & Zvesper, J.A. Distributed iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies. Auton Agent Multi-Agent Syst 25, 395–418 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10458-011-9178-1

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