Coordinating with a “Problem Solver”

Jacob Glazer () and Ariel Rubinstein Rubinstein ()
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Jacob Glazer: Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel; and
Ariel Rubinstein Rubinstein: School of Economics, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel 69978; and Department of Economics, New York University, New York, New York 10012

Management Science, 2019, vol. 67, issue 6, 2813-2819

Abstract: A “problem solver” (PS) is an agent who when interacting with other agents does not “put himself in their shoes” but rather chooses a best response to a uniform distribution over all possible configurations consistent with the information he receives about the other agents’ moves. We demonstrate the special features of a PS by analyzing a modified coordination game. In the first stage, each of the other participants—who are treated as conventional players—chooses a location. The PS then receives some partial information about their moves and chooses his location. The PS wishes to coordinate with any one of the conventional players and they wish to coordinate with him but not with each other. Equilibria are characterized and shown to have different properties than those of Nash equilibria when the PS is treated as a conventional player. This paper was accepted by Joshua Gans, business strategy.

Keywords: problem solver; Gale–Ryser algorithm; coordination games; artificial intelligence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:65:y:2019:i:6:p:2813-2819

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