Maria-Florina Balcan Georgia Tech
Avrim Blum Carnegie Mellon
Yishay Mansour Tel-Aviv/Google
The Price of Uncertainty
ACM-EC 2009
Games are an abstraction
Costs/payoffs are a function of players actions. No external influences
If all repeatedly play same way, get exact same payoff
Assume all players incentives are modeled
High-level question: What happens to natural dynamics if these don't quite hold
Games are an abstraction
We'd like to think that if we get people into a good equilibrium, and players are selfish, reasonably myopic, etc, then behavior will stay there.
High-level question: What happens to natural dynamics if these don't quite hold
Games are an abstraction
We'd like to think that if we get people into a good equilibrium, and players are selfish, reasonably myopic, etc, then behavior will stay there.
But what if there are small fluctuations in underlying cost/payoff structure
Consider a typical game
We'd like to think that if we get people into a good equilibrium, and players are selfish, reasonably myopic, etc, then behavior will stay there.
But what if there are small fluctuations in underlying cost/payoff structure
Games are an abstraction
We'd like to think that if we get people into a good equilibrium, and players are selfish, reasonably myopic, etc, then behavior will stay there.
But what if there are small fluctuations in underlying cost/payoff structure
Or a few players acting unpredictably
Can small fluctuations or a few unpredictable players cause natural dynamics to spin out of control and get system into a high-cost state
Consider a typical game
We'd like to think that if we get people into a good equilibrium, and players are selfish, reasonably myopic, etc, then behavior will stay there.
But what if there are small fluctuations in underlying cost/payoff structure
Or a few players acting unpredictably

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