2023/04/04 by Marcos M. Vasconcelos, Vasconcelos, Marcos M., Behrouz Touri +1 · 1 citation
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Auction Theory and Applications #Economic theories and models #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Game Theory and Applications #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Multiagent Systems (cs.MA) #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2304.01445
openalex publication_date 2023/04/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the problem of achieving decentralized coordination by a group of strategic decision makers choosing to engage or not in a task in a stochastic setting. First, we define a class of symmetric utility games that encompass a broad class of coordination games, including the popular framework known as global games. With the goal of studying the extent to which agents engaging in a stochastic coordination game indeed coordinate, we propose a new probabilistic measure of coordination efficiency. Then, we provide an universal information theoretic upper bound on the coordination efficiency as a function of the amount of noise in the observation channels. Finally, we revisit a large class of global games, and we illustrate that their Nash equilibrium policies may be less coordination efficient then certainty equivalent policies, despite of them providing better expected utility. This counter-intuitive result, establishes the existence of a nontrivial trade-offs between coordination efficiency and expected utility in coordination games.