Joe Halpern
Cornell
Time: Friday, November 30, 2012, 2:30 pm
Location: CEWIT 200

Beyond Nash Equilibrium: Solution Concepts for the 21st Century

Nash equilibrium is the most commonly-used notion of equilibrium in game theory. However, it suffers from numerous problems. Some are well known in the game theory community; for example, the Nash equilibrium of repeated prisoner's dilemma is neither normatively nor descriptively reasonable. However, new problems arise when considering Nash equilibrium from a computer science perspective: for example, Nash equilibrium is not robust (it does not tolerate "faulty" or "unexpected" behavior), it does not deal with coalitions, it does not take computation cost into account, and it does not deal with cases where players are not aware of all aspects of the game. In this talk, I discuss solution concepts that try to address these shortcomings of Nash equilibrium. This talk represents joint work with various collaborators, including Ittai Abraham, Danny Dolev, Rica Gonen, Rafael Pass, and Leandro Rego. No background in game theory will be presumed.