Mean-field games and two-point boundary value problems
A large population of agents seeking to regulate their state to values characterized by a low density is considered. The problem is posed as a mean-field game, for which solutions depend on two partial differential equations, namely the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation and the Fokker-Plank-Kolmogorov equation. The case in which the distribution of agents is a sum of polynomials and the value function is quadratic is considered. It is shown that a set of ordinary differential equations, with two-point boundary value conditions, can be solved in place of the more complicated partial differential equations associated with the problem. The theory is illustrated by a numerical example.
Crowd-Averse Robust Mean-Field Games: Approximation via State Space Extension
We consider a population of dynamic agents, also referred to as players. The state of each player evolves according to a linear stochastic differential equation driven by a Brownian motion and under the influence of a control and an adversarial disturbance. Every player minimizes a cost functional which involves quadratic terms on state and control plus a cross-coupling mean-field term measuring the congestion resulting from the collective behavior, which motivates the term “crowd-averse.” Motivations for this model are analyzed and discussed in three main contexts: a stock market application, a production engineering example, and a dynamic demand management problem in power systems. For th…
A two-point boundary value formulation of a mean-field crowd-averse game
Abstract We consider a population of “crowd-averse” dynamic agents controlling their states towards regions of low density. This represents a typical dissensus behavior in opinion dynamics. Assuming a quadratic density distribution, we first introduce a mean-field game formulation of the problem, and then we turn the game into a two-point boundary value problem. Such a result has a value in that it turns a set of coupled partial differential equations into ordinary differential equations.