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Continuous-Time Constrained Stochastic Games under the Discounted Cost Criteria

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Abstract

In this paper, we consider the continuous-time nonzero-sum constrained stochastic games with the discounted cost criteria. The state space is denumerable and the action space of each player is a general Polish space, while the transition rates and cost functions are allowed to be unbounded from below and from above. The strategies for each player may be history-dependent and randomized. Models with these features seemingly have not been handled in the previous literature. By constructing a sequence of continuous-time finite-state game models to approximate the original denumerable-state game model, we prove the existence of constrained Nash equilibria for the constrained games with denumerable states.

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Notes

  1. By introducing the notation \(\mathcal {G}_\infty \), we can use the notation \(\mathcal {G}_n(n\in \overline{\mathbb {N}})\) to denote the finite-state game or the original game to make the presentation concise.

  2. To be absolutely rigorous, one should write \(\widehat{P}_{\varvec{\varphi }^{-k},\overline{\gamma }_n}^{\varphi ^k}\) as \(\widehat{P}_{\varvec{\varphi }^{-k},\overline{\gamma }_n,n}^{\varphi ^k}\) to emphasize the transition laws \(\overline{Q}^{\varvec{\varphi }^{-k}}_{n}\) and initial distribution \(\overline{\gamma }_n\) to construct \(\widehat{P}_{\varvec{\varphi }^{-k},\overline{\gamma }_n}^{\varphi ^k}\) is dependent on \(\varvec{\varphi }^{-k}\) and n. Nevertheless, we omit the subscript n for brevity. Moreover, it is obvious that \(\widehat{P}_{\varvec{\varphi }^{-k},\overline{\gamma }_n}^{\varphi ^k}\) is the marginal distribution of \(\overline{P}_{\overline{\gamma }_n,n}^{\varvec{\varphi }}\) on \(\overline{\Omega }^k_n\).

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Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to the associate editor and the anonymous referees for the constructive comments. This work was partially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11526054) and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province of China (Grant No. 2016J05006).

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Correspondence to Wenzhao Zhang.

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Zhang, W. Continuous-Time Constrained Stochastic Games under the Discounted Cost Criteria. Appl Math Optim 77, 275–296 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00245-016-9374-0

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