Potentials in social environments

Games and Economic Behavior 2026 Open access

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Authors: Thomas Demuynck, P. Jean‐Jacques Herings, Christian Seel
DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002
Cited by: 1
References: 19

Abstract

We develop and extend notions of potentials for normal-form games (Monderer and Shapley, 1996) to present a unified approach for the general class of social environments. The different potentials and corresponding social environments can be ordered in terms of their permissiveness. We classify different methods to construct potentials and we characterize potentials for specific examples such as matching problems, vote trading, multilateral trade, TU games, and various pillage games.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation Opinion Dynamics and Social Influence Game Theory and Applications

Publication details

Journal / source
Games and Economic Behavior
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Volume
158
Pages
419–440
Publication date
14 April 2026
Language
EN