Adjustment Processes for Exchange Economies and Noncooperative Games

Adjustment Processes for Exchange Economies and Noncooperative Games Synopsis

This monograph is a treatise on adjustment processes. We consider price adjustment processes in exchange economies and strategy adjustment processes in noncooperative games. In the most simple version of an exchange economy, i.e. a pure exchange economy, there exist markets on which prices are determined by the demand and supply created by a finite number of consumers willing to exchange their initial endowments in order to maximize their utilities. An equilibrium situation is attained if, for some price vector, demand equals supply in all markets. Starting from a situation not being an equi- librium an adjustment process reaches an equilibrium via adaptations of prices. The advantage of the adjustment processes we will present in this monograph is that they exist and converge under far weaker assumptions than existing processes. The second subject concerns the problem of finding Nash equilibria in noncooperative games. A Nash equilibrium is a situation from which no player can improve his position by unilaterally changing his strategy. We present a new algorithm for finding such equilibria. The sequence of stra- tegy vectors generated by the algorithm can be interpreted as the path followed by a strategy adjustment process.