Here is a handbook chapter that is long overdue. The theory of epistemic games concerns a fairly novel justification for solution concepts under strategic uncertainty – that is, situations where what I want to do depends on other people do, and vice versa. We generally analyze these as games, and have a bunch of equilibrium (Nash, subgame perfection, etc.) and nonequilibrium (Nash bargain, rationalizability, etc.) solution concepts. So which should you use? I can think of four classes of justification for a game solution. First, the solution might be stable: if you told each player what to do, no one person (or sometimes group) would want to deviate. Maskin mentions this justification is particularly worthy when it comes to mechanism design. Second, the solution might be the outcome of a dynamic selection process, such as evolution or a particular learning rule. Third, the solution may be justified by certain axiomatic first principles; Shapley value is a good example in this class. The fourth class, however, is the one we most often teach students: a solution concept is good because it is justified by individual behavior assumptions. Nash, for example, is often thought to be justified by “rationality plus correct beliefs”. Backward induction is similarly justified by “common knowledge of rationality at all states.”
Those are informal arguments, however. The epistemic games (or sometimes, “interactive epistemology”) program seeks to formally analyze assumptions about the knowledge and rationality of players and what it implies for behavior. There remain many results we don’t know (for instance, I asked around and could only come up with one paper on the epistemics of coalitional games), but the results proven so far are actually fascinating. Let me give you three: rationality and common belief in rationality implies rationalizable strategies are played, the requirements for Nash are different depending on how players there are, and backward induction is surprisingly difficult to justify on epistemic grounds.
First, rationalizability. Take a game and remove any strictly dominated strategy for each player. Now in the reduced game, remove anything that is strictly dominated. Continue doing this until nothing is left to remove. The remaining strategies for each player are “rationalizable”. If players can hold any belief they want about what potential “types” opponents may be – where a given (Harsanyi) type specifies what an opponent will do – then as long as we are all rational, we all believe the opponents are rational, we all believe the opponents all believe that we all are rational, ad infinitum, the only possible outcomes to the game are the rationalizable ones. Proving this is actually quite complex: if we take as primitive the “hierarchy of beliefs” of each player (what do I believe my opponents will do, what do I believe they believe I will do, and so on), then we need to show that any hierarchy of beliefs can be written down in a type structure, then we need to be careful about how we define “rational” and “common belief” on a type structure, but all of this can be done. Note that many rationalizable strategies are not Nash equilibria.
So what further assumptions do we need to justify Nash? Recall the naive explanation: “rationality plus correct beliefs”. Nash takes us from rationalizability, where play is based on conjectures about opponent’s play, to an equilibrium, where play is based on correct conjectures. But which beliefs need to be correct? With two players and no uncertainty, the result is actually fairly straightforward: if our first order beliefs are (f,g), we mutually believe our first order beliefs are (f,g), and we mutually believe we are rational, then beliefs (f,g) represent a Nash equilibrium. You should notice three things here. First, we only need mutual belief (I know X, and you know I know X), not common belief, in rationality and in our first order beliefs. Second, the result is that our first-order beliefs are that a Nash equilibrium strategy will be played by all players; the result is about beliefs, not actual play. Third, with more than two players, we are clearly going to need assumptions about how my beliefs about our mutual opponent are related to your beliefs; that is, Nash will require more, epistemically, than “basic strategic reasoning”. Knowing these conditions can be quite useful. For instance, Terri Kneeland at UCL has investigated experimentally the extent to which each of the required epistemic conditions are satisfied, which helps us to understand situations in which Nash is harder to justify.
Finally, how about backward induction? Consider a centipede game. The backward induction rationale is that if we reached the final stage, the final player would defect, hence if we are in the second-to-last stage I should see that coming and defect before her, hence if we are in the third-to-last stage she will see that coming and defect before me, and so on. Imagine that, however, player 1 does not defect in the first stage. What am I to infer? Was this a mistake or am I perhaps facing an irrational opponent? Backward induction requires that I never make such an inference, and hence I defect in stage 2.
Here is a better justification for defection in the centipede game, though. If player 1 doesn’t defect in the first stage, then I “try my best” to retain a belief in his rationality. That is, if it is possible for him to have some belief about my actions in the second stage which rationally justified his first stage action, then I must believe that he holds those beliefs. For example, he may believe that I believe he will continue again in the third stage, hence that I will continue in the second stage, hence he will continue in the first stage then plan to defect in the third stage. Given his beliefs about me, his actions in the first stage were rational. But if that plan to defect in stage three were his justification, then I should defect in stage two. He realizes I will make these inferences, hence he will defect in stage 1. That is, the backward induction outcome is justified by forward induction. Now, it can be proven that rationality and common “strong belief in rationality” as loosely explained above, along with a suitably rich type structure for all players, generates a backward induction outcome. But the epistemic justification is completely based on the equivalence between forward and backward induction under those assumptions, not on any epistemic justification for backward induction reasoning per se. I think that’s a fantastic result.
Final version, prepared for the new Handbook of Game Theory. I don’t see a version on RePEc IDEAS.
A Fine Theorem 