A Theory of Network Games Part 1: Utility Representations

Joseph Root and Evan Sadler

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: We demonstrate that a ubiquitous feature of network games, bilateral strategic interactions, is equivalent to having player utilities that are additively separable across opponents. We distinguish two formal notions of bilateral strategic interactions. Opponent independence means that player i's preferences over opponent j's action do not depend on what other opponents do. Strategic independence means that how opponent j's choice influences i's preference between any two actions does not depend on what other opponents do. If i's preferences jointly satisfy both conditions, then we can represent her preferences over strategy profiles using an additively separable utility. If i's preferences satisfy only strategic independence, then we can still represent her preferences over just her own actions using an additively separable utility. Common utilities based on a linear aggregate of opponent actions satisfy strategic independence and are therefore strategically equivalent to additively separable utilities--in fact, we can assume a utility that is linear in opponent actions.

Date: 2026-02, Revised 2026-02
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.16071 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:arx:papers:2602.16071

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().