Distributed iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies

TL;DR

This paper explores how truthful communication among rational agents influences the process of iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies in a game-theoretic setting, providing an epistemic justification for this distributed method.

Contribution

It introduces a framework with interaction structures to analyze distributed IESDS driven by communication, offering an epistemic characterization of its outcomes.

Findings

Communication enables the elimination of strictly dominated strategies.

The paper provides an epistemic justification for distributed IESDS.

It characterizes the conditions under which communication leads to strategy elimination.

Abstract

We characterize epistemic consequences of truthful communication among rational agents in a game-theoretic setting. To this end we introduce normal-form games equipped with an interaction structure, which specifies which groups of players can communicate their preferences with each other. We then focus on a specific form of interaction, namely a distributed form of iterated elimination of strictly dominated strategies (IESDS), driven by communication among the agents. We study the outcome of IESDS after some (possibly all) messages about players' preferences have been sent. The main result of the paper provides an epistemic justification of this form of IESDS.