Stochastic fictitious play with continuous action sets

• Published in: Journal of economic theory 2014-07, Vol.152, p.179-213
• Main Authors: Perkins, S., Leslie, D.S.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Abstract stochastic approximation; Approximation; Asymptotic methods; Banach spaces; Continuous action set games; Convergence; Economic dynamics; Economic theory; Equilibrium; Game theory; Learning in games; Stochastic fictitious play; Stochastic models; Stochastic processes; Studies
• ISSN: 0022-0531; 1095-7235
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2014.04.008

Continuous action space games are ubiquitous in economics. However, whilst learning dynamics in normal form games with finite action sets are now well studied, it is not until recently that their continuous action space counterparts have been examined. We extend stochastic fictitious play to the continuous action space framework. In normal form games with finite action sets the limiting behaviour of a discrete time learning process is often studied using its continuous time counterpart via stochastic approximation. In this paper we study stochastic fictitious play in games with continuous action spaces using the same method. This requires the asymptotic pseudo-trajectory approach to stochastic approximation to be extended to Banach spaces. In particular the limiting behaviour of stochastic fictitious play is studied using the associated smooth best response dynamics on the space of finite signed measures. Using this approach, stochastic fictitious play is shown to converge to an equilibrium point in two-player zero-sum games and a stochastic fictitious play-like process is shown to converge to an equilibrium in negative definite single population games.