Potentials in social environments

Thomas Demuynck; P. Jean-Jacques Herings; Christian Seel

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002

Potentials in social environments

Thomas Demuynck^*
, P. Jean-Jacques Herings
, Christian Seel

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

We develop and extend notions of potentials for normal-form games (Monderer and Shapley, 1996) to present a unified approach for the general class of social environments. The different potentials and corresponding social environments can be ordered in terms of their permissiveness. We classify different methods to construct potentials and we characterize potentials for matching problems, vote trading, multilateral trade, TU games, and various pillage games.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	419-440
Number of pages	22
Journal	Games and Economic Behavior
Volume	158
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002
Publication status	Published - 2026

JEL classifications

c70 - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory: General
c71 - Cooperative Games

Keywords

potential games
social environments

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10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002Licence: CC BY

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title = "Potentials in social environments",

abstract = "We develop and extend notions of potentials for normal-form games (Monderer and Shapley, 1996) to present a unified approach for the general class of social environments. The different potentials and corresponding social environments can be ordered in terms of their permissiveness. We classify different methods to construct potentials and we characterize potentials for matching problems, vote trading, multilateral trade, TU games, and various pillage games.",

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AU - Seel, Christian

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AB - We develop and extend notions of potentials for normal-form games (Monderer and Shapley, 1996) to present a unified approach for the general class of social environments. The different potentials and corresponding social environments can be ordered in terms of their permissiveness. We classify different methods to construct potentials and we characterize potentials for matching problems, vote trading, multilateral trade, TU games, and various pillage games.

KW - potential games

KW - social environments

U2 - 10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002

DO - 10.1016/j.geb.2026.04.002

M3 - Article

SN - 0899-8256

VL - 158

SP - 419

EP - 440

JO - Games and Economic Behavior

JF - Games and Economic Behavior

ER -

Potentials in social environments

Abstract

JEL classifications

Keywords

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Cite this