Article ID: | iaor20128240 |
Volume: | 155 |
Issue: | 3 |
Start Page Number: | 1060 |
End Page Number: | 1072 |
Publication Date: | Dec 2012 |
Journal: | Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications |
Authors: | Stefanescu Anton, Ferrara Massimiliano, Stefanescu Maria |
Keywords: | game theory |
Equilibrium in choice is a solution‐concept for noncooperative games defined in a general framework–the game in choice form. There are two leading ideas of the new definition. One is that the players’ preferences need not be explicitly represented, but earlier accepted solution concepts should be formally derived as particular cases. Secondly, the choice of a player need not be a best reply to the strategy combination of the others, if the choices of the other players are motivated for themselves and a best reply does not exist. It is shown that in the present framework are included classical models of game theory, and the new concept extends various known noncooperative solutions. The main technical results of the paper concern the existence of the equilibrium in choice. As particular cases, known results on the existence of classical solutions are found. Thus, our approach can be also seen as a general method for proving the existence of different solutions for noncooperative games.