Related papers: Late comment on Astumian's paradox
I give a simple analysis of the game that I previously published in Scientific American which shows the paradoxical behavior whereby two losing games randomly combine to form a winning game. The game, modeled on a random walk, requires only…
In a zero-sum stochastic game with signals, at each stage, two adversary players take decisions and receive a stage payoff determined by these decisions and a variable called state. The state follows a Markov chain, that is controlled by…
We discuss some aspects of Astumian suggestions that combination of biased games (Parrondo's paradox) can explain performance of molecular motors. Unfortunately the model is flawed by explicit asymmetry overlooked by the author. In…
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…
A model of stochastic games where multiple controllers jointly control the evolution of the state of a dynamic system but have access to different information about the state and action processes is considered. The asymmetry of information…
We study a two-player, zero-sum, stochastic game with incomplete information on one side in which the players are allowed to play more and more frequently. The informed player observes the realization of a Markov chain on which the payoffs…
Markov chains are an important example for a course on stochastic processes because simple board games can be used to illustrate the fundamental concepts. For example, a looping board game (like Monopoly) consists of all recurrent states,…
Consider a system of \(n\) players in which each initially starts on a different team. At each time step, we select an individual winner and an individual loser randomly and the loser joins the winner's team. The resulting Markov chain and…
We present two collective games with new paradoxical features when they are combined. Besides reproducing the so--called Parrondo effect, where a winning game is obtained from the alternation of two fair games, a new effect appears, i.e.,…
It was shown in Flesch and Solan (2022) with a rather involved proof that all two-player stochastic games with finite state and action spaces and shift-invariant payoffs admit an $\epsilon$-equilibrium, for every $\epsilon>0$. Their proof…
We consider zero-sum repeated games with incomplete information on both sides, where the states privately observed by each player follow independent Markov chains. It generalizes the model, introduced by Aumann and Maschler in the sixties…
We introduce a deterministic analogue of Markov chains that we call the hunger game. Like rotor-routing, the hunger game deterministically mimics the behavior of both recurrent Markov chains and absorbing Markov chains. In the case of…
We study a general formulation of the classical two-player Dynkin game in a discrete time Markovian setting. We identify an appropriate class of mixed strategies -- \textit{Markovian randomized stopping times} -- in which players stop at…
Understanding the strategic behavior of miners in a blockchain is of great importance for its proper operation. A common model for mining games considers an infinite time horizon, with players optimizing asymptotic average objectives.…
This paper studies stochastic games on large graphs and their graphon limits. We propose a new formulation of graphon games based on a single typical player's label-state distribution. In contrast, other recently proposed models of graphon…
We consider the problem of distributed convergence to efficient outcomes in coordination games through dynamics based on aspiration learning. Under aspiration learning, a player continues to play an action as long as the rewards received…
Given access to a single long trajectory generated by an unknown irreducible Markov chain $M$, we simulate an $\alpha$-lazy version of $M$ which is ergodic. This enables us to generalize recent results on estimation and identity testing…
In this paper, we investigate a partially observable zero sum games where the state process is a discrete time Markov chain. We consider a general utility function in the optimization criterion. We show the existence of value for both…
There are only limited classes of multi-player stochastic games in which independent learning is guaranteed to converge to a Nash equilibrium. Markov potential games are a key example of such classes. Prior work has outlined sets of…
A stochastic modification of Conway's cellular automaton "Life" is introduced here. Any cell could be perturbed spontaneously to the opposite (dead or alive) state at any iteration with a very low probability. This probability is assumed to…