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This work investigates a problem of simultaneous global cost minimization and Nash equilibrium seeking, which commonly exists in $N$-cluster non-cooperative games. Specifically, the agents in the same cluster collaborate to minimize a…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-03-18 Yipeng Pang , Guoqiang Hu

We consider a subclass of $n$-player stochastic games, in which players have their own internal state/action spaces while they are coupled through their payoff functions. It is assumed that players' internal chains are driven by independent…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2023-03-23 S. Rasoul Etesami

We consider the problem of non-stationary reinforcement learning (RL) in the infinite-horizon average-reward setting. We model it by a Markov Decision Process with time-varying rewards and transition probabilities, with a variation budget…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-24 Neharika Jali , Eshika Pathak , Pranay Sharma , Guannan Qu , Gauri Joshi

In noncooperative Nash games, equilibria are often inefficient. This is exemplified by the Prisoner's Dilemma and was first provably shown in the 1980s. Since then, understanding the quality of Nash equilibrium (NE) received considerable…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2024-12-02 Yuyang Qiu , Farzad Yousefian , Brian Zhang

We study infinite-horizon Constrained Markov Decision Processes (CMDPs) with general policy parameterizations and multi-layer neural network critics. Existing theoretical analyses for constrained reinforcement learning largely rely on…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-03-10 Anirudh Satheesh , Pankaj Kumar Barman , Washim Uddin Mondal , Vaneet Aggarwal

Natural policy gradient (NPG) and its variants are widely-used policy search methods in reinforcement learning. Inspired by prior work, a new NPG variant coined NPG-HM is developed in this paper, which utilizes the Hessian-aided momentum…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-01-23 Jie Feng , Ke Wei , Jinchi Chen

We design and analyze reinforcement learning algorithms for Graphon Mean-Field Games (GMFGs). In contrast to previous works that require the precise values of the graphons, we aim to learn the Nash Equilibrium (NE) of the regularized GMFGs…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2023-10-27 Fengzhuo Zhang , Vincent Y. F. Tan , Zhaoran Wang , Zhuoran Yang

We prove that, for finite-arm bandits with linear function approximation, the global convergence of policy gradient (PG) methods depends on inter-related properties between the policy update and the representation. textcolor{blue}{First},…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-04 Jincheng Mei , Bo Dai , Alekh Agarwal , Mohammad Ghavamzadeh , Csaba Szepesvari , Dale Schuurmans

This paper addresses the problem of learning an equilibrium efficiently in general-sum Markov games through decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning. Given the fundamental difficulty of calculating a Nash equilibrium (NE), we…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2022-02-01 Weichao Mao , Tamer Başar

Performative Reinforcement Learning (PRL) refers to a scenario in which the deployed policy changes the reward and transition dynamics of the underlying environment. In this work, we study multi-agent PRL by incorporating performative…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-04-30 Rilind Sahitaj , Paulius Sasnauskas , Yiğit Yalın , Debmalya Mandal , Goran Radanović

Although it has been known since the 1970s that a globally optimal strategy profile in a common-payoff game is a Nash equilibrium, global optimality is a strict requirement that limits the result's applicability. In this work, we show that…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2022-07-08 Scott Emmons , Caspar Oesterheld , Andrew Critch , Vincent Conitzer , Stuart Russell

We present on-line policy gradient algorithms for computing the locally optimal policy of a constrained, average cost, finite state Markov Decision Process. The stochastic approximation algorithms require estimation of the gradient of the…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2018-12-18 Vikram Krishnamurthy , Felisa Vazquez Abad

A novel Policy Gradient (PG) algorithm, called $\textit{Matryoshka Policy Gradient}$ (MPG), is introduced and studied, in the context of fixed-horizon max-entropy reinforcement learning, where an agent aims at maximizing entropy bonuses…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2024-10-10 François Ged , Maria Han Veiga

Policy gradient methods, where one searches for the policy of interest by maximizing the value functions using first-order information, become increasingly popular for sequential decision making in reinforcement learning, games, and…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2023-10-10 Shicong Cen , Yuejie Chi

We extend the potential-based shaping method from Markov decision processes to multi-player general-sum stochastic games. We prove that the Nash equilibria in a stochastic game remains unchanged after potential-based shaping is applied to…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2014-01-17 Xiaosong Lu , Howard M. Schwartz , Sidney N. Givigi

In this paper we present a novel generic mapping between Graphical Games and Markov Random Fields so that pure Nash equilibria in the former can be found by statistical inference on the latter. Thus, the problem of deciding whether a…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2007-05-23 Constantinos Daskalakis

Motivated by applications to online advertising and recommender systems, we consider a game-theoretic model with delayed rewards and asynchronous, payoff-based feedback. In contrast to previous work on delayed multi-armed bandits, we focus…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2020-06-22 Amélie Héliou , Panayotis Mertikopoulos , Zhengyuan Zhou

This work studies Nash equilibrium seeking for a class of stochastic aggregative games, where each player has an expectation-valued objective function depending on its local strategy and the aggregate of all players' strategies. We propose…

Optimization and Control · Mathematics 2022-05-17 Tongyu Wang , Peng Yi , Jie Chen

We consider finite horizon Markov decision processes under performance measures that involve both the mean and the variance of the cumulative reward. We show that either randomized or history-based policies can improve performance. We prove…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2011-05-02 Shie Mannor , John Tsitsiklis

We test the performance of deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG), a deep reinforcement learning algorithm, able to handle continuous state and action spaces, to learn Nash equilibria in a setting where firms compete in prices. These…

Computer Science and Game Theory · Computer Science 2025-09-30 Christoph Graf , Viktor Zobernig , Johannes Schmidt , Claude Klöckl