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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Cohen, Asaf, Laurière, Mathieu, Zell, Ethan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04975
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author Cohen, Asaf
Laurière, Mathieu
Zell, Ethan
author_facet Cohen, Asaf
Laurière, Mathieu
Zell, Ethan
contents This paper proposes and analyzes two neural network methods to solve the master equation for finite-state mean field games (MFGs). Solving MFGs provides approximate Nash equilibria for stochastic, differential games with finite but large populations of agents. The master equation is a partial differential equation (PDE) whose solution characterizes MFG equilibria for any possible initial distribution. The first method we propose relies on backward induction in a time component while the second method directly tackles the PDE without discretizing time. For both approaches, we prove two types of results: there exist neural networks that make the algorithms' loss functions arbitrarily small, and conversely, if the losses are small, then the neural networks are good approximations of the master equation's solution. We conclude the paper with numerical experiments on benchmark problems from the literature up to dimension 15, and a comparison with solutions computed by a classical method for fixed initial distributions.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_04975
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Deep Backward and Galerkin Methods for the Finite State Master Equation
Cohen, Asaf
Laurière, Mathieu
Zell, Ethan
Optimization and Control
Machine Learning
This paper proposes and analyzes two neural network methods to solve the master equation for finite-state mean field games (MFGs). Solving MFGs provides approximate Nash equilibria for stochastic, differential games with finite but large populations of agents. The master equation is a partial differential equation (PDE) whose solution characterizes MFG equilibria for any possible initial distribution. The first method we propose relies on backward induction in a time component while the second method directly tackles the PDE without discretizing time. For both approaches, we prove two types of results: there exist neural networks that make the algorithms' loss functions arbitrarily small, and conversely, if the losses are small, then the neural networks are good approximations of the master equation's solution. We conclude the paper with numerical experiments on benchmark problems from the literature up to dimension 15, and a comparison with solutions computed by a classical method for fixed initial distributions.
title Deep Backward and Galerkin Methods for the Finite State Master Equation
topic Optimization and Control
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.04975