Related papers: Resolving the two envelope paradox
Choosing a hard-to-guess secret is a prerequisite in many security applications. Whether it is a password for user authentication or a secret key for a cryptographic primitive, picking it requires the user to trade-off usability costs with…
In a guessing game, players guess the value of a random real number selected using some probability density function. The winner may be determined in various ways; for example, a winner can be a player whose guess is closest in magnitude to…
This paper studies the trade-off between two different kinds of pure exploration: breadth versus depth. The most biased coin problem asks how many total coin flips are required to identify a "heavy" coin from an infinite bag containing both…
Parrondo's paradox was introduced by Juan Parrondo in 1996. In game theory, this paradox is described as: A combination of losing strategies becomes a winning strategy. At first glance, this paradox is quite surprising, but we can easily…
This paper introduces a novel criterion, persuasiveness, to select equilibria in signaling games. In response to the Stiglitz critique, persuasiveness focuses on the comparison across equilibria. An equilibrium is more persuasive than an…
We start with the well-known game below: Two players hold a sheet of paper to their forehead on which a positive integer is written. The numbers are consecutive and each player can only see the number of the other one. In each time step,…
A valuation for a player in a game in extensive form is an assignment of numeric values to the players moves. The valuation reflects the desirability moves. We assume a myopic player, who chooses a move with the highest valuation.…
Coin-flipping is a fundamental task in two-party cryptography where two remote mistrustful parties wish to generate a shared uniformly random bit. While quantum protocols promising near-perfect security exist for weak coin-flipping -- when…
Unusually large prize pools in lotteries like Mega Millions and Powerball attract additional bettors, which increases the likelihood that multiple winners will have to share the pool. Thus, the expected value of a lottery ticket decreases…
We consider extensive form win-lose games over a complete binary-tree of depth $n$ where players act in an alternating manner. We study arguably the simplest random structure of payoffs over such games where 0/1 payoffs in the leafs are…
Siegel's paradox is a fundamental question in international finance about exchange rates for futures contracts and has puzzled many scholars for over forty years. The unorthodox approach presented in this article leads to an arbitrage-free…
Changes in payoffs can transform Prisoner's Dilemma and other social dilemmas into harmonious win-win games. Using the Robinson-Goforth topology of 2x2 games, this paper analyzes how payoff swaps turn Prisoner's Dilemma into other games,…
The law of maturity is the belief that less-observed events are becoming mature and, therefore, more likely to occur in the future. Previous studies have shown that the assumption of infinite exchangeability contradicts the law of maturity.…
Coin flipping is a cryptographic primitive in which two distrustful parties wish to generate a random bit in order to choose between two alternatives. This task is impossible to realize when it relies solely on the asynchronous exchange of…
We consider a card guessing game with complete feedback. A ordered deck of n cards labeled 1 up to n is riffle-shuffled exactly one time. Then, the goal of the game is to maximize the number of correct guesses of the cards, where one after…
The paper studies one-shot two-player games with non-Bayesian uncertainty. The players have an attitude that ranges from optimism to pessimism in the face of uncertainty. Given the attitudes, each player forms a belief about the set of…
We introduce a 2-player game played on an infinite grid, initially empty, where each player in turn chooses a vertex and colours it. The first player aims to create some pattern from a target set, while the second player aims to prevent it.…
We consider the psychological effect of preference reversal and show that it finds a natural explanation in the frame of quantum decision theory. When people choose between lotteries with non-negative payoffs, they prefer a more certain…
Cooperative Parrondo's games on a regular two dimensional lattice are analyzed based on the computer simulations and on the discrete-time Markov chain model with exact transition probabilities. The paradox appears in the vicinity of the…
We analyze the susceptibility of instant runoff voting (IRV) to a lesser-studied paradox known as a \emph{reinforcement paradox}, which occurs when candidate $X$ wins under IRV in two distinct elections but $X$ loses in the combined…