Browsing by Subject "Game Theory"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6

Open Access
Design and analysis of mechanisms for decentralized joint replenishment
(Elsevier B.V., 2017) Güler, K.; Körpeoğlu, E.; Şen, A.
We consider jointly replenishing multiple firms that operate under an EOQ like environment in a decentralized, non-cooperative setting. Each firm's demand rate and inventory holding cost rate are private information. We are interested in finding a mechanism that would determine the joint replenishment frequency and allocate the joint ordering costs to these firms based on their reported stand-alone replenishment frequencies (if they were to order independently). We first provide an impossibility result showing that there is no direct mechanism that simultaneously achieves efficiency, incentive compatibility, individual rationality and budget-balance. We then propose a general, two-parameter mechanism in which one parameter is used to determine the joint replenishment frequency, another is used to allocate the order costs based on firms’ reports. We show that efficiency cannot be achieved in this two-parameter mechanism unless the parameter governing the cost allocation is zero. When the two parameters are same (a single parameter mechanism), we find the equilibrium share levels and corresponding total cost. We finally investigate the effect of this parameter on equilibrium behavior. We show that properly adjusting this parameter leads to mechanisms that are better than other mechanisms suggested earlier in the literature in terms of fairness and efficiency. © 2016 Elsevier B.V.
Open Access
Foraging swarms as Nash equilibria of dynamic games
(IEEE, 2014) Özgüler, A. B.; Yildiz, A.
The question of whether foraging swarms can form as a result of a noncooperative game played by individuals is shown here to have an affirmative answer. A dynamic game played by N agents in 1-D motion is introduced and models, for instance, a foraging ant colony. Each agent controls its velocity to minimize its total work done in a finite time interval. The game is shown to have a unique Nash equilibrium under two different foraging location specifications, and both equilibria display many features of a foraging swarm behavior observed in biological swarms. Explicit expressions are derived for pairwise distances between individuals of the swarm, swarm size, and swarm center location during foraging.
Open Access
A game theoretic analysis of the Second Punic war
(2013) Altınbay, Egehan Hayrettin
This thesis, through a game theoretic methodology, aims to build an accurate game theoretic model of the Second Punic War, and tries to analyze the military strategies and actions taken by the Carthaginian and Roman Republics. After observing that the modeling literature concerning the game theoretic studies of war has generally analyzed the wars beginning from the 19th century, this thesis also aims to provide a contribution to the game theoretic literature by constructing a model that displays the strategic interaction between Rome and Carthage. By starting from the question of how one could game theoretically model the Second Punic War and what argumentations would such a model would give, the work presented here compiles the available historical information regarding the military choices of the two Republics, and by using those literary findings, tries to explain the reasons behind Carthage’s offense and Rome’s defense choices. By arguing that the findings through game theoretic analysis is compatible with the historical literary evidence, iv the model also reveals novel argumentations concerning under what conditions both states would or would not prefer a particular military action.
Open Access
A game theoretic analysis of the strategic options available for Israel in response to Iran's nuclear program
(2014) Yazıcı, Emir
Israel is the most concerned actor about Iran’s nuclear program due to its geographical position and fragile relations with Iran. Thus, Israel’s stance towards Iran’s nuclear program is particularly important in the nuclear crisis between Iran and the West. This thesis evaluates the four possible strategic options available for Israel in response to Iran’s nuclear program: controlling strategy, deterrence strategy, reassurance strategy, and combination of deterrence and reassurance strategies. Through a game theoretic approach, it is aimed to answer the questions thatwhat are the advantages and limitations of these strategies and which one would be the best option for Israel. Moreover, the underlying dynamics of each strategic option and their influence on the players’ choices are also presented through the extensive form game models. As a response to questions mentioned above, this thesis argues that instead of a pure deterrence, controlling, or reassurance strategy, combination of reassurance and deterrence strategies would promise better outcomes for Israel.
Open Access
Signaling games in networked systems
(2018-07) Sarıtaş, Serkan
We investigate decentralized quadratic cheap talk and signaling game problems when the decision makers (an encoder and a decoder) have misaligned objective functions. We first extend the classical results of Crawford and Sobel on cheap talk to multi-dimensional sources and noisy channel setups, as well as to dynamic (multi-stage) settings. Under each setup, we investigate the equilibria of both Nash (simultaneous-move) and Stackelberg (leader-follower) games. We show that for scalar cheap talk, the quantized nature of Nash equilibrium policies holds for arbitrary sources; whereas Nash equilibria may be of non-quantized nature, and even linear for multi-dimensional setups. All Stackelberg equilibria policies are fully informative, unlike the Nash setup. For noisy signaling games, a Gauss-Markov source is to be transmitted over a memoryless additive Gaussian channel. Here, conditions for the existence of a ne equilibria, as well as informative equilibria are presented, and a dynamic programming formulation is obtained for linear equilibria. For all setups, conditions under which equilibria are noninformative are derived through information theoretic bounds. We then provide a different construction for signaling games in view of the presence of inconsistent priors among multiple decision makers, where we focus on binary signaling problems. Here, equilibria are analyzed, a characterization on when informative equilibria exist, and robustness and continuity properties to misalignment are presented under Nash and Stackelberg criteria. Lastly, we provide an analysis on the number of bins at equilibria for the quadratic cheap talk problem under the Gaussian and exponential source assumptions. Our findings reveal drastic differences in signaling behavior under team and game setups and yield a comprehensive analysis on the value of information; i.e., for the decision makers, whether there is an incentive for information hiding, or not, which have practical consequences in networked control applications. Furthermore, we provide conditions on when a ne policies may be optimal in decentralized multi-criteria control problems and for the presence of active information transmission even in strategic environments. The results also highlight that even when the decision makers have the same objective, presence of inconsistent priors among the decision makers may lead to a lack of robustness in equilibrium behavior.
Open Access
The super power versus a regional power : a game theoretical approach to the current nuclear tension between the US and Iran
(2009) Aydın, Sabri
This thesis investigates how the nuclear tension between Iran and the US is likely to result. Game theoretical analyses are applied in order to develop the argument of this study. First, the reason why states pursue nuclear weapons and the factors that push Iran to go nuclear are analyzed. Second, the mutual threat perceptions between the US and Iran are analyzed and the effect of such perceptions on Iran’s nuclear venture is investigated. Third, three US policy options, namely diplomacy, military operation and stimulating a regime change, are elaborated. Fourth, the interaction between the US and Iran is analyzed by using two different forms of games, complete and incomplete information, and two different methods, backwards induction and Bayes’s theorem. It is concluded that Iran’s nuclear pursuit is mostly security based and the nuclear tension between Iran and the US creates a vicious circle. While Iran is going for nuclear weapons primarily to protect itself from the external threats, the US challenge to Iran’s nuclear pursuit poses a security threat to Iran and makes Iranians much more eager to develop their own nuclear weapon capability.