We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Of the three game forms, it is the extensive form, or the game tree, that provides the most detailed description of the actions that are available to the players. I shall argue that, as was the case with the other two game forms, this description is not adequate. On the one hand, it fails to specify, for example, the legal institutions, such as whether it is possible for a player to selfcommit to his future actions. [It is the answer to this question that lies at the heart of the distinction between Nash and subgame perfect equilibria (see Definitions 8.0.3 and 8.0.4).] And, on the other hand, it involves unnecessarily detailed information:
The game tree is an extremely useful device for didactic purposes, but one must often pay a high price for its use, in terms of redundancy. The rules of many games permit the same physical “position” to be reached through various different sequences of moves. Yet in a tree each sequence of moves must lead to a different node. The tree convention forces us to remember the history of the position, whether we want to or not
(Shubik 1984, p. 48).Insisting on such a detailed description is not only “wasteful”; it also has serious consequences.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.
