Search results for "Rational agent"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Opinion Dynamics and Stubbornness via Multi-Population Mean-Field Games
2016
This paper studies opinion dynamics for a set of heterogeneous populations of individuals pursuing two conflicting goals: to seek consensus and to be coherent with their initial opinions. The multi-population game under investigation is characterized by (i) rational agents who behave strategically, (ii) heterogeneous populations, and (iii) opinions evolving in response to local interactions. The main contribution of this paper is to encompass all of these aspects under the unified framework of mean-field game theory. We show that, assuming initial Gaussian density functions and affine control policies, the Fokker---Planck---Kolmogorov equation preserves Gaussianity over time. This fact is t…
Codification schemes and finite automata
2000
This paper is a note on how Information Theory and Codification Theory are helpful in the computational design both of communication protocols and strategy sets in the framework of finitely repeated games played by boundedly rational agents. More precisely, we show the usefulness of both theories to improve the existing automata bounds of Neyman¿s (1998) work on finitely repeated games played by finite automata.
An evolutionary model of voting
2001
Collective allocation of resources that takes place in po- litical markets is characterized by the complex exchange that emerges among the individuals involved. Traditional Public Choice models de- part from individual rational choice in a setup in which many of its strict requirements need not hold. This paper introduces a model of social interaction among agents in a simple political market which de- parts from bounded rationality and evolutionary dynamics as the key mechanisms that drive individual behavior. Learning plays a signicant role as it allows to establish an individual link between decisions and collective outcomes. The model is that of a representative democracy with two parti…
A formal model based on Game Theory for the analysis of cooperation in distributed service discovery
2016
New systems can be designed, developed, and managed as societies of agents that interact with each other by offering and providing services. These systems can be viewed as complex networks where nodes are bounded rational agents. In order to deal with complex goals, they require cooperation of the other agents to be able to locate the required services. The aim of this paper is formally and empirically analyze under which circumstances cooperation emerges in decentralized search of services. We propose a repeated game model that formalizes the interactions among agents in a search process where agents are free to choose between cooperate or not in the process. Agents make decisions based on…
Non-linear protocols for optimal distributed consensus in networks of dynamic agents
2006
We consider stationary consensus protocols for networks of dynamic agents with fixed topologies. At each time instant, each agent knows only its and its neighbors'' state, but must reach consensus on a group decision value that is function of all the agents'' initial state. We show that the agents can reach consensus if the value of such a function is time-invariant when computed over the agents'' state trajectories. We use this basic result to introduce a non-linear protocol design rule allowing consensus on a quite general set of values. Such a set includes, e.g., any generalized mean of order p of the agents'' initial states. As a second contribution we show that our protocol design is t…
MECHANISM DESIGN FOR OPTIMAL CONSENSUS PROBLEMS
2006
We consider stationary consensus protocols for networks of dynamic agents with fixed and switching topologies. At each time instant, each agent knows only its and its neighbors’ state, but must reach consensus on a group decision value that is function of all the agents’ initial state.We show that our protocol design is the solution of individual optimizations performed by the agents. This notion suggests a game theoretic interpretation of consensus problems as mechanism design problems. Under this perspective a supervisor entails the agents to reach a consensus by imposing individual objectives. We prove that such objectives can be chosen so that rational agents have a unique optimal proto…