Abstract

Proceedings Abstracts of the Twenty-Third International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence

Endogenous Boolean Games / 390
Paolo Turrini

In Boolean games players exercise control over propositional variables and strive to achieve a goal formula whose realization might require the opponents' cooperation. Recently, a theory of incentive engineering for such games has been devised, where an external authority steers the outcome of the game towards certain desirable properties consistent with players' goals, by imposing a taxation mechanism on the players that makes the outcomes that do not comply with those properties less appealing to them. The present contribution stems from a complementary perspective and studies, instead, how boolean games can be transformed from inside, rather than from outside, by endowing players with the possibility of sacrificing a part of their payoff received at a certain outcome in order to convince other players to play a certain strategy. What we call here endogenous boolean games (EBGs) boils down to enriching the framework of boolean games with the machinery of side payments coming from game theory. We analyze equilibria in EBGs, showing the preconditions needed for desirable outcomes to be achieved without external intervention. Finally, making use of taxation mechanism, we show how to transform an EBG in such a way that desirable outcomes can be realized independently of side payments.