Static Stability in Games Part II: Asymmetric Games

Static stability in strategic games differs from dynamic stability in only considering the players’ incentives to change their strategies. It does not rely on any assumptions about the players’ reactions to these incentives and it is not linked with any particular dynamics. This paper introduces a general notion of static stability of strategy profiles that is applicable to any N-player strategic game. It examines several important classes of games, with strategy spaces or payoff functions that have special structures, where this general notion takes a simple, concrete form. The paper also explores the relations between static stability and specific kinds of dynamic stability, and connects static stability in general, asymmetric games with the related, but essentially weaker, notion of static stability of strategies in symmetric games.