@techreport{ea5ea2803b434e3d9f436e697f06e4cd,
title = "The Possibility of Impossible Stairways and Greener Grass",
abstract = "In classical game theory, players have finitely many actions and evaluate outcomes of mixed strategies using a von Neumann-Morgenstern utility function. Allowing a larger, but countable, player set introduces a host of phenomena that are impossible in finite games. Firstly, in coordination games, all players have the same preferences: switching to a weakly dominant action makes everyone at least as well off as before. Nevertheless, there are coordina- tion games where the best outcome occurs if everyone chooses a weakly dominated action, while the worst outcome occurs if everyone chooses the weakly dominant action. Secondly, the location of payoff-dominant equilibria behaves capriciously: two coordination games that look so much alike that even the consequences of unilateral deviations are the same may nevertheless have disjoint sets of payoff-dominant equilibria. Thirdly, a large class of games has no (pure or mixed) Nash equilibria. Following the proverb \the grass is always greener on the other side of the hedge{"}, greener-grass games model constant discontent: in one part of the strategy space, players would rather switch to its complement. Once there, they'd rather switch back.",
keywords = "coordination games, dominant strategies, payoff-dominance, nonexistence of equi- librium, tail events",
author = "M. Voorneveld",
note = "Subsequently published in Games and Economic Behaviour, 2010 Pagination: 15",
year = "2007",
language = "English",
volume = "2007-62",
series = "CentER Discussion Paper",
publisher = "Microeconomics",
type = "WorkingPaper",
institution = "Microeconomics",
}