Raghupati Vyas, a research fellow in the IEOR department at IIT Bombay, presented the paper titled “Balancing Rationality and Social Influence: Alpha-Rational Nash Equilibrium in Games with Herding” (co-authored with Khushboo Agarwal, Prof. Konstantin Avrachenkov, and Prof. Veeraruna Kavitha) at the 13th EAI International Conference on Game Theory for Networks, organized at Magdalene College, University of Cambridge, UK. The conference was held from March 17, 2025, to March 18, 2025.
Abstract of the paper: Classical game theory assumes that players are fully rational and intelligent, meaning they have access to all the required knowledge, have all the computational power and aim to optimize their utility functions. However, such idealized scenarios are rarely observed in real-world games involving large populations. The paper analyzes population games with a mix of rational players and herding irrational players (who simply follow the majority) by introducing a novel equilibrium concept called alpha-rational Nash equilibrium (α-RNE). It compares the outcomes, utilities, and popular dynamics of classical game settings with those of settings involving herding players.
