Games under Ambiguous Payoffs and Optimistic Attitudes

Abstract EN

In real-life games, the consequence or payoff of a strategy profile and a player's belief about the consequence of a strategy profile are often ambiguous, and players may have different optimistic attitudes with respect to a strategy profile.

To handle this problem, this paper proposes a decision rule using the Hurwicz criterion and Dempster-Shafer theory.

Based on this rule, we introduce a new kind of games, called ambiguous games, and propose a solution concept that is appropriate for this sort of games.

Moreover, we also study how the beliefs regarding possible payoffs and optimistic attitudes may affect the solutions of such a game.

To illustrate our model, we provide an analysis of a scenario concerning allocating resource of defending and attacking in military contexts.