Regular Potential Games

07/19/2017

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by   Brian Swenson, et al.

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A fundamental problem with the Nash equilibrium concept is the existence of certain "structurally deficient" equilibria that (i) lack fundamental robustness properties, and (ii) are difficult to analyze. The notion of a "regular" Nash equilibrium was introduced by Harsanyi. Such equilibria are highly robust and relatively simple to analyze. A game is said to be regular if all equilibria in the game are regular. In this paper it is shown that almost all potential games are regular. That is, except for a closed subset of potential games with Lebesgue measure zero, all potential games are regular. As an immediate consequence of this, the paper also proves an oddness result for potential games: In almost all potential games, the number of Nash equilibrium strategies is finite and odd.