Collusion constrained equilibrium

Abstract

We study collusion within groups in non-cooperative games. The primitives are the preferences of the players, their assignment to non-overlapping groups and the goals of the groups. Our notion of collusion is that a group coordinates the play of its members among different incentive compatible plans to best achieve its goals. Unfortunately, equilibria that meet this requirement need not exist. We instead introduce the weaker notion of collusion constrained equilibrium. This allows groups to randomize between alternatives to which they are not indifferent in certain razor's edge cases where slight perturbations of group beliefs change the set of incentive compatible plans in a discontinuous way. Collusion constrained equilibria exist and are a subset of the correlated equilibria of the underlying game. We examine four perturbations of the underlying game. In each case we show that equilibria in which groups choose the best alternative exist and that limits of these equilibria lead to collusion constrained equilibria. We also show that for a broadest class of perturbations every collusion constrained equilibrium arises as such a limit. We give an application to a voter participation game showing how collusion constraints may be socially costly.