PhD conferral Mr Andrey Meshalkin, MMath.

“Bargaining and Decision Making for Rational Agents”

Keywords: bargaining games, behaviour, equilibrium strategies

In this study various bargaining games are considered, where players make alternative offers of how to split a surplus, and game ends when an offer is accepted. Equilibrium strategies and possible game outcomes were investigated.  It was shown that in unanimity acceptance rule any outcome of the game is supported by equilibrium strategies, whereas in majority voting rule equilibrium strategies lead to a particular set of outcomes, and full characterization of this set was provided. Next to bargaining games, a general decision making process was investigated of an individual who is rational, believes that he or she will remain rational, but is not certain about particular own actions that will be taken in the future. Different approaches to this decision making problem were compared and the conclusion is that both the equilibrium concept and the concept of closed under rational behavior yields the set of optimal policies as the unique prediction.