Title
Dynamics To Equilibrium In Network Games: Individual Behavior And Global Response
Abstract
Various social contexts can be depicted as games of strategic interactions on networks, where an individual's welfare depends on both her and her partners' actions. Whereas much attention has been devoted to Bayes-Nash equilibria in such games, here we look at strategic interactions from an evolutionary perspective. To this end, we present the results of a numerical simulations program for these games, which allows us to find out whether Nash equilibria are accessible by adaptation of player strategies, and in general to identify the attractors of the evolution. Simulations allow us to go beyond a global characterization of the cooperativeness at equilibrium and probe into individual behavior. We find that when players imitate each other, evolution does not reach Nash equilibria and, worse, leads to very unfavorable states in terms of welfare. On the contrary, when players update their behavior rationally, they self-organize into a rich variety of Nash equilibria, where individual behavior and payoffs are shaped by the nature of the game, the social network's structure and the players' position within the network. Our results allow to assess the validity of mean-field approaches we use to describe the dynamics of these games. Interestingly, our dynamically-found equilibria generally do not coincide with (but show qualitatively the same features of) those resulting from theoretical predictions in the context of one-shot games under incomplete information.
Year
DOI
Venue
2014
10.1371/journal.pone.0120343
PLOS ONE
Keywords
Field
DocType
biomedical research,text mining,bioinformatics
Coordination game,Mathematical economics,Epsilon-equilibrium,Social network,Computer science,Best response,Equilibrium selection,Game theory,Bioinformatics,Nash equilibrium,Complete information
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
10
3
1932-6203
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
1
0.36
5
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Giulio Cimini112613.77
Claudio Castellano2262.67
Angel Sánchez310.36