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Documents authored by Harrenstein, Paul


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Nash Equilibrium and Bisimulation Invariance

Authors: Julian Gutierrez, Paul Harrenstein, Giuseppe Perelli, and Michael Wooldridge

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 85, 28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017)


Abstract
Game theory provides a well-established framework for the analysis of concurrent and multi-agent systems. The basic idea is that concurrent processes (agents) can be understood as corresponding to players in a game; plays represent the possible computation runs of the system; and strategies define the behaviour of agents. Typically, strategies are modelled as functions from sequences of system states to player actions. Analysing a system in such a way involves computing the set of (Nash) equilibria in the game. However, we show that, with respect to the above model of strategies---the standard model in the literature---bisimilarity does not preserve the existence of Nash equilibria. Thus, two concurrent games which are behaviourally equivalent from a semantic perspective, and which from a logical perspective satisfy the same temporal formulae, nevertheless have fundamentally different properties from a game theoretic perspective. In this paper we explore the issues raised by this discovery, and investigate three models of strategies with respect to which the existence of Nash equilibria is preserved under bisimilarity. We also use some of these models of strategies to provide new semantic foundations for logics for strategic reasoning, and investigate restricted scenarios where bisimilarity can be shown to preserve the existence of Nash equilibria with respect to the conventional model of strategies in the literature.

Cite as

Julian Gutierrez, Paul Harrenstein, Giuseppe Perelli, and Michael Wooldridge. Nash Equilibrium and Bisimulation Invariance. In 28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 85, pp. 17:1-17:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2017)


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@InProceedings{gutierrez_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.17,
  author =	{Gutierrez, Julian and Harrenstein, Paul and Perelli, Giuseppe and Wooldridge, Michael},
  title =	{{Nash Equilibrium and Bisimulation Invariance}},
  booktitle =	{28th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2017)},
  pages =	{17:1--17:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-048-4},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2017},
  volume =	{85},
  editor =	{Meyer, Roland and Nestmann, Uwe},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-77902},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2017.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Bisumulation, Nash equilibrium, Multiagent systems, Strategy logic}
}
Document
Expresiveness and Complexity Results for Strategic Reasoning

Authors: Julian Gutierrez, Paul Harrenstein, and Michael Wooldridge

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 42, 26th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2015)


Abstract
This paper presents a range of expressiveness and complexity results for the specification, computation, and verification of Nash equilibria in multi-player non-zero-sum concurrent games in which players have goals expressed as temporal logic formulae. Our results are based on a novel approach to the characterisation of equilibria in such games: a semantic characterisation based on winning strategies and memoryful reasoning. This characterisation allows us to obtain a number of other results relating to the analysis of equilibrium properties in temporal logic. We show that, up to bisimilarity, reasoning about Nash equilibria in multi-player non-zero-sum concurrent games can be done in ATL^* and that constructing equilibrium strategy profiles in such games can be done in 2EXPTIME using finite-memory strategies. We also study two simpler cases, two-player games and sequential games, and show that the specification of equilibria in the latter setting can be obtained in a temporal logic that is weaker than ATL^*. Based on these results, we settle a few open problems, put forward new logical characterisations of equilibria, and provide improved answers and alternative solutions to a number of questions.

Cite as

Julian Gutierrez, Paul Harrenstein, and Michael Wooldridge. Expresiveness and Complexity Results for Strategic Reasoning. In 26th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 42, pp. 268-282, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)


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@InProceedings{gutierrez_et_al:LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.268,
  author =	{Gutierrez, Julian and Harrenstein, Paul and Wooldridge, Michael},
  title =	{{Expresiveness and Complexity Results for Strategic Reasoning}},
  booktitle =	{26th International Conference on Concurrency Theory (CONCUR 2015)},
  pages =	{268--282},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-91-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{42},
  editor =	{Aceto, Luca and de Frutos Escrig, David},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.268},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-53802},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CONCUR.2015.268},
  annote =	{Keywords: Temporal logic, Nash equilibrium, game models, formal verification}
}
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