Subgame Consistent Cooperation ― A Comprehensive Treatise

This book is a comprehensive treatise on subgame-consistent dynamic cooperation, covering the latest state-of-the-art analyses in this important topic. Strategic behavior in the human and social world has been increasingly recognized in both theory and practice. It is well known that non-cooperative behavior can lead to suboptimal or even highly undesirable outcomes. Cooperation suggests the possibility of obtaining socially optimal solutions, and calls for cooperation are prevalent in real-life problems. Dynamic cooperation cannot be sustainable if there is no guarantee that the optimality principle agree upon at the beginning is maintained throughout the cooperation. It is the lack of such guarantees that cause cooperative schemes fail to last, or even fail to get started. The property of subgame consistency in cooperative dynamic games and the corresponding solution mechanism resolve this “classic” problem in game theory.

The book discusses the theory, solution techniques and applications of subgame-consistent cooperation in a wide spectrum of paradigms for analysis, including cooperative dynamic game models with stochastic state dynamics; with uncertain future payoffs; with asynchronous players’ horizons; with random cooperation duration; with control-space switching and with transferable and nontransferable payoffs. It is a significant research reference text for researchers in game theory, economists, applied mathematicians, policy-makers, corporate decision-makers and graduate students in applied mathematics, game theory, decision sciences, economics and management sciences.