Voronoi Games on the Discrete Hypercube: Four-Player Equilibria

TL;DR

This paper characterizes four-player equilibria in a voting game on the discrete hypercube, proving that such equilibria are exactly the balanced profiles where two players choose 0 and two choose 1 in each coordinate.

Contribution

It proves a conjecture that four-player equilibria on the hypercube are precisely the balanced profiles, linking game theory and combinatorial structures.

Findings

Equilibria correspond exactly to balanced profiles.

Balanced profiles are characterized by two players choosing 0 and two choosing 1 in each coordinate.

The conjecture of Day and Johnson is confirmed.

Abstract

We consider a four-player game on the discrete hypercube $Q_n = \{0,1\}^n$, where each of the four players has chosen a single vertex of the hypercube. Such a position is called a profile. Imagine there is a voter at every vertex, and each voter gives their vote to whichever player is closest to them, in terms of Hamming distance. If multiple players are tied for this smallest distance, the vote is divided equally between them. The score of a player is the total number of votes they get. (This has a natural interpretation in terms of voting theory: imagine there are $n$ binary issues and that voters are uniformly distributed in their positions on these issues, and view the players as political candidates competing for vote share.) We say that a profile is an equilibrium if no player can strictly increase their score by moving to a different vertex, while the other players maintain their original positions. Moreover, a profile is balanced if, in each of the $n$ coordinates, two players have chosen 0, and two players have chosen 1. We prove that a four-player profile is an equilibrium if and only if it is balanced, proving a conjecture of Day and Johnson.