Minimax Theory and its Applications 05 (2020), No. 1, 077--101
Copyright Heldermann Verlag 2020
Mutual Support Equilibrium
Zhicheng Gao
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont. K1S5B6, Canada
Zhicheng.Gao@carleton.ca
Moussa Larbani
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ont. K1S5B6, Canada
Moussa.Larbani@carleton.ca
In recent years, experimental evidence has shown that in normal form games noncooperative behavior is not the only behavior that the players show. Mutual support, altruism, reciprocity and fairness are among behaviors that the players exhibit during the game. These considerable advances in experimental research have not been completely formalized. New concepts of solution and models that reflect other regarding preferences need to be introduced, investigated and applied to real-world game situations. This paper is a contribution to this direction of research. We introduce two new solution concepts for normal form games that reflect altruism and mutual support among players, the altruistic equilibrium and the mutual support equilibrium. We present their properties and provide sufficient conditions for their existence. Further, they are compared to related existing solution concepts. Some research problems are stated in the conclusion.
Keywords: Minimax, Nash equilibrium, altruistic equilibrium, mutual support equilibrium.
MSC: 05A15, 05A16.
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