Collaborative dominance: When doing unto others as you would have them do unto you is reasonable

Abstract

In this article, we analyze how reasonable it is to play according to some Nash equilibria if players have a preference for one of their opponents' strategies. To formalize our argument, we propose the concepts of collaborative dominance and collaborative equilibrium studying some of its properties. First, we prove that if the collaborative equilibrium exists, then it is always efficient, what can be seen as a focal property. Moreover, we argue that one reason that may lead players not to collaborate is that they can focus on security instead of efficiency properties, in which case they would prefer to play according to maximin strategies. This argument allows us to reduce the hall of reasonable equilibria for games where a collaborative equilibrium exists. Finally, we show that two-player zero-sumgames do not have collaborative equilibrium, and that if they contain a strategy profile composed only of collaboratively dominated actions, then such profile is a Nash equilibrium of the game. © 2013 Brazilian Operations Research Society.