• - preference relation. is at least as good as .
  • - strict preference relation. is strictly better than .
  • - indifference relation. and are equally good.
  • - the payoff function over outcomes
  • - the payoff function over actions
  • - set of actions
  • - set of outcomes
  • - generic action
  • - the outcome of action
  • - discounting factor

  • - generic player
  • - player is Nature.
  • - the set of players in the game
  • - subscript indicates that we should exclude player

  • - a game

  • - a pure strategy of player

  • - a pure strategy of player at time step .

  • - the set of strategies of player

  • - a profile of pure strategies chosen by all players of the game.

  • - the set of all sets of strategies (consisting of all ).

  • - the payoff function for the -th player .

  • - expected payoff for the -th player

  • - the tuple of all payoff functions

  • - the payoff received by player under strategy profile .

  • - strictly dominance relation. strictly dominates .

  • - weak dominance relation. weakly dominates ‘.

  • - strictly dominant strategy profile

  • - weakly dominant strategy profile

  • - iterated-elimination equilibrium

  • - best response correspondence.

  • , - Nash equilibrium.

  • - the simplex of .

  • - the set of all mixed strategies

  • - the collection of best response correspondences.

  • - a mixed strategy for player .

  • - the probability that player plays .

  • - a behavioral strategy for player . The distinction with a mixed strategy will be clear in context.

  • - belief of player .

  • - belief of player on opponent’s strategy .


  • - denotes a decision tree
  • - terminal nodes in the decision tree
  • - denotes a decision node on the tree
  • - an information partition on the decision tree
  • - information set in for player
  • - generic element of information set.
  • - a set of actions available for information set
  • - an action partition
  • - a family of probabilities based on the partitions

  • In a game tree, a dashed line or an ellipse encompassing more than one vertex denotes a non-singleton information set

  • - horizon. total number of games for multistage games
  • - generic time step
  • - history up to (excluding) time step .
  • - the expected payoff of player from the information set onward by playing
  • - a strategy that is identical to except at . At we use the action instead.

  • - generic stage game
  • - a finitely repeated game wherein stage game is played consecutive times with as the common discount factor.
  • - an infinitely repeated game wherein stage game is played an infinite number of times with as the common discount factor.
  • - in the context of an infinitely repeated game, it denotes the set of all histories of length .

  • - Set of Type spaces of all players.
  • - Type space of player
  • - Player is type
  • - profile of player types.
  • - the belief of player with respect to the uncertainty over the other players’ types.
  • - a system of beliefs of an extensive form game.

  • - public alternative
  • - monetary gain or loss given a certain type.
  • - a decision rule on the public alternative.
  • - the monetary equivalent of public alternative for player of type .
  • - the set of outcomes in a mechanism design problem

  • - the best response actions of player given that player has chosen and where belief assigns positive probability only to types in the set in a signaling game.