Optimally Installing Strict Equilibria

Abstract: In this work, we develop a reward design framework for installing a desired behavior as a strict equilibrium across standard solution concepts: dominant strategy equilibrium, Nash equilibrium, correlated equilibrium, and coarse correlated equilibrium. We also extend our framework to capture the Markov-perfect equivalents of each solution concept. Central to our framework is a comprehensive mathematical characterization of strictly installable, based on the desired solution concept and the behavior's structure. These characterizations lead to efficient iterative algorithms, which we generalize to handle optimization objectives through linear programming. Finally, we explore how our results generalize to bounded rational agents.