Evolutionary Analysis of Continuous-time Finite-state Mean Field Games with Discounted Payoffs

Fuente: arXiv
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Auteurs principaux: Pedroso, Leonardo, Agazzi, Andrea, Heemels, W. P. M. H., Salazar, Mauro
Format: Preprint
Publié: 2025
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author Pedroso, Leonardo
Agazzi, Andrea
Heemels, W. P. M. H.
Salazar, Mauro
author_facet Pedroso, Leonardo
Agazzi, Andrea
Heemels, W. P. M. H.
Salazar, Mauro
contents We consider a class of continuous-time dynamic games involving a large number of players. Each player selects actions from a finite set and evolves through a finite set of states. State transitions occur stochastically and depend on the player's chosen action. A player's single-stage reward depends on their state, action, and the population-wide distribution of states and actions, capturing aggregate effects such as congestion in traffic networks. Each player seeks to maximize a discounted infinite-horizon reward. Existing evolutionary game-theoretic approaches introduce a model for the way individual players update their decisions in static environments without individual state dynamics. In contrast, this work develops an evolutionary framework for dynamic games with explicit state evolution, which is necessary to model many applications. We introduce a mean field approximation of the finite-population game and establish approximation guarantees. Since state-of-the-art solution concepts for dynamic games lack an evolutionary interpretation, we propose a new concept - the Mixed Stationary Nash Equilibrium (MSNE) - which admits one. We characterize an equivalence between MSNE and the rest points of the proposed mean field evolutionary model and we give conditions for the evolutionary stability of MSNE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_07655
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Evolutionary Analysis of Continuous-time Finite-state Mean Field Games with Discounted Payoffs
Pedroso, Leonardo
Agazzi, Andrea
Heemels, W. P. M. H.
Salazar, Mauro
Systems and Control
Computer Science and Game Theory
Optimization and Control
We consider a class of continuous-time dynamic games involving a large number of players. Each player selects actions from a finite set and evolves through a finite set of states. State transitions occur stochastically and depend on the player's chosen action. A player's single-stage reward depends on their state, action, and the population-wide distribution of states and actions, capturing aggregate effects such as congestion in traffic networks. Each player seeks to maximize a discounted infinite-horizon reward. Existing evolutionary game-theoretic approaches introduce a model for the way individual players update their decisions in static environments without individual state dynamics. In contrast, this work develops an evolutionary framework for dynamic games with explicit state evolution, which is necessary to model many applications. We introduce a mean field approximation of the finite-population game and establish approximation guarantees. Since state-of-the-art solution concepts for dynamic games lack an evolutionary interpretation, we propose a new concept - the Mixed Stationary Nash Equilibrium (MSNE) - which admits one. We characterize an equivalence between MSNE and the rest points of the proposed mean field evolutionary model and we give conditions for the evolutionary stability of MSNE.
title Evolutionary Analysis of Continuous-time Finite-state Mean Field Games with Discounted Payoffs
topic Systems and Control
Computer Science and Game Theory
Optimization and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.07655