Econometrica: Sep, 2013, Volume 81, Issue 5

Discounted Stochastic Games With No Stationary Nash Equilibrium: Two Examples

https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA10530
p. 1973-2007

Yehuda Levy

We present two examples of discounted stochastic games, each with a continuum of states, finitely many players, and actions, that possess no stationary equilibria. The first example has deterministic transitions—an assumption undertaken in most of the early applications of dynamics games in economics—and perfect information, and does not possess even stationary approximate equilibria or Markovian equilibria. The second example satisfies, in addition to stronger regularity assumptions, that all transitions are absolutely continuous with respect to a fixed measure—an assumption that has been widely used in more recent economic applications. This assumption has been undertaken in several positive results on the existence of stationary equilibria in special cases, and in particular, guarantees the existence of stationary approximate equilibria.