English

Low-Rank Payoffs and Limit Uniqueness in Global Games

Theoretical Economics 2026-07-25 v1

Abstract

When does the global game information structure select a unique equilibrium? Limit uniqueness in two-player supermodular games fails exactly when a risk-dominant better response cycle exists (Veiel, 2025). We show that rank-one factor structure on payoffs eliminates such cycles entirely, so every rank-one supermodular game admits a generalized ordinal potential and limit uniqueness follows for any number of actions. The boundary is sharp: an explicit three-action rank-two game carries a length-six cycle, no supermodular game carries a cycle of length four, and every game within a quantified sup-norm margin of a nondegenerate rank-one game is cycle-free. Rank-one structure can also be manufactured: when players compete across many independent markets with common latent payoffs, the stacked observation matrix is rank one plus sparse, and a Robust PCA estimator leaves residual noise that vanishes with the signal scale yet stays positive at any finite sample, even under partial observation.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.23360,
  title  = {Low-Rank Payoffs and Limit Uniqueness in Global Games},
  author = {Dana Golden},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.23360},
  year   = {2026}
}