Pay or Play

Sigal Oren, Michael Schapira, Moshe Tennenholtz
Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, PMLR R11:589-598, 2013.

Abstract

We introduce the class of pay or play games, which captures scenarios in which each deci- sion maker is faced with a choice between two actions: one with a fixed payoffand another with a payoffdependent on others’ selected actions. This is, arguably, the simplest set- ting that models selection among certain and uncertain outcomes in a multi-agent system. We study the properties of equilibria in such games from both a game-theoretic perspec- tive and a computational perspective. Our main positive result establishes the existence of a semi-strong equilibrium in every such game. We show that although simple, pay or play games contain well-studied environ- ments, e.g., vaccination games. We discuss the interesting implications of our results for these environments.

Cite this Paper

BibTeX
@InProceedings{pmlr-vR11-oren13a, title = {Pay or Play}, author = {Oren, Sigal and Schapira, Michael and Tennenholtz, Moshe}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence}, pages = {589--598}, year = {2013}, editor = {Nicholson, Ann and Smyth, Padhraic}, volume = {R11}, series = {Proceedings of Machine Learning Research}, month = {12--14 Jul}, publisher = {PMLR}, pdf = {https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mlresearch/r11/main/assets/oren13a/oren13a.pdf}, url = {https://proceedings.mlr.press/r11/oren13a.html}, abstract = {We introduce the class of pay or play games, which captures scenarios in which each deci- sion maker is faced with a choice between two actions: one with a fixed payoffand another with a payoffdependent on others’ selected actions. This is, arguably, the simplest set- ting that models selection among certain and uncertain outcomes in a multi-agent system. We study the properties of equilibria in such games from both a game-theoretic perspec- tive and a computational perspective. Our main positive result establishes the existence of a semi-strong equilibrium in every such game. We show that although simple, pay or play games contain well-studied environ- ments, e.g., vaccination games. We discuss the interesting implications of our results for these environments.}, note = {Reissued by PMLR on 04 October 2026.} }
Endnote
%0 Conference Paper %T Pay or Play %A Sigal Oren %A Michael Schapira %A Moshe Tennenholtz %B Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence %C Proceedings of Machine Learning Research %D 2013 %E Ann Nicholson %E Padhraic Smyth %F pmlr-vR11-oren13a %I PMLR %P 589--598 %U https://proceedings.mlr.press/r11/oren13a.html %V R11 %X We introduce the class of pay or play games, which captures scenarios in which each deci- sion maker is faced with a choice between two actions: one with a fixed payoffand another with a payoffdependent on others’ selected actions. This is, arguably, the simplest set- ting that models selection among certain and uncertain outcomes in a multi-agent system. We study the properties of equilibria in such games from both a game-theoretic perspec- tive and a computational perspective. Our main positive result establishes the existence of a semi-strong equilibrium in every such game. We show that although simple, pay or play games contain well-studied environ- ments, e.g., vaccination games. We discuss the interesting implications of our results for these environments. %Z Reissued by PMLR on 04 October 2026.
APA
Oren, S., Schapira, M. & Tennenholtz, M.. (2013). Pay or Play. Proceedings of the 29th Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, in Proceedings of Machine Learning Research R11:589-598 Available from https://proceedings.mlr.press/r11/oren13a.html. Reissued by PMLR on 04 October 2026.

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