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Strategically zero-sum games: The class of games whose completely mixed equilibria cannot be improved upon

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Abstract

In this paper we propose a new class of games, the “strategically zero-sum games,” which are characterized by a special payoff structure. We show that for a large body of correlation schemes which includes the correlated strategies “à la Aumann”, strategically zero-sum games are exactly these games for which no completely mixed Nash equilibrium can be improved upon.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CORE, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics, Univerité Catholique de Louvain, 34 du Roman Pays, B-1348, Louvain-la-Neuve

    H. Moulin &  J. -P. Vial

Authors
  1. H. Moulin
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  2. J. -P. Vial
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Additional information

Part of this work was done while one of the authors was visiting the School of Business Administration of the University of California, Berkeley.

The authors wish to thank R.J. Aumann and R.W. Rosenthal for their valuable comments.

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Moulin, H., Vial, J.P. Strategically zero-sum games: The class of games whose completely mixed equilibria cannot be improved upon. Int J Game Theory 7, 201–221 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01769190

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01769190

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