Nash Equilibria via Duality and Homological Selection

Abstract

Given a multifunction from $X$ to the $k-$fold symmetric product $Sy{m}_k(X)$, we use the Dold-Thom Theorem to establish a homological selection Theorem. This is used to establish existence of Nash equilibria. Cost functions in problems concerning the existence of Nash Equilibria are traditionally multilinear in the mixed strategies. The main aim of this paper is to relax the hypothesis of multilinearity. We use basic intersection theory, Poincaré Duality in addition to the Dold-Thom Theorem.

20 pages, 4 figures. Final version to appear in Proceedings of the Indian Academy of Sciences (Math. Sci.)