Below you'll find the program for the Interdisciplinary Seminar in Game Theory, organised by the CDAM: Computational, Discrete and Applicable Mathematics@LSE|.
The Seminar meets at irregular times throughout the year, so please check date, time and room below. Follow this link for a map of the different buildings of the school|.
Remarks, suggestions, etc., about the seminar can be forwarded to the current organiser, Prof Bernhard von Stengel, by sending e-mail to stengel@maths.lse.ac.uk|
Upcoming Speakers
2010:
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Thursday 11th February
Miklos Reiter (University of Cambridge)
Title: A Game-Theoretic Model for Pricing Internet Service
Abstract: We model the interaction between Internet Service Providers on a two-segment network as a game where the players set prices in order to maximize profit. First, we extend the Bertrand-Edgeworth price competition game with capacity constraints to the case where part of the players' capacity is sold under long-term contracts, proving the existence and uniqueness of pure and mixed (random) strategy equilibria in different demand regions. Next, we add a player controlling the upstream network link, and prove price equilibrium conditions in the two-segment network. In the region of intermediate demand, a pure strategy equilibrium fails to exist. Here, we prove the existence of a unique equilibrium point where every downstream player chooses an optimal mixed strategy and the upstream player chooses a locally optimal pure strategy.
The full model is a two-stage game where the competing downstream players choose to sell bandwidth using long-term forward contracts in the first stage, and all players set prices in the second stage.
Although players have an incentive to enter into long-term contracts, as it makes their profit more predictable, we show that contracting can put downstream players at a strategic disadvantage in the second stage.
However, if one downstream player chooses a low contracting level in the first stage, this raises prices for all downstream players in the second stage. We show that a pure strategy contracting equilibrium is necessarily asymmetric, with a unique lowest contracting level.
Joint work with Richard Steinberg.
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Thursday 6th May
Yannick Viossat (Paris-Dauphine)
Time-Average Replicator and Best-Reply Dynamics
Previous Seminars: