• Graduate Program
  • Research
  • Browse our Courses
  • Events
    • Events Calendar
    • Events Archive
    • Tinbergen Institute Lectures
    • Summer School
      • Deep Learning
      • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
      • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
      • Marketing Research with Purpose
      • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
      • Sustainable Finance
      • Tuition Fees and Payment
      • Tinbergen Institute Summer School Program
    • Annual Tinbergen Institute Conference archive
  • News
  • Summer School
    • Deep Learning
    • Economics of Blockchain and Digital Currencies
    • Foundations of Machine Learning with Applications in Python
    • Marketing Research with Purpose
    • Modern Toolbox for Spatial and Functional Data
    • Sustainable Finance
  • Alumni

Granic, G. and Kern, J. (2016). Circulant Games Theory and Decision, 80(1):43--69.


  • Journal
    Theory and Decision

We study a class of two-player normal-form games with cyclical payoff structures. A game is called circulant if both players{\textquoteright} payoff matrices fulfill a rotational symmetry condition. The class of circulant games contains well-known examples such as Matching Pennies, Rock-Paper-Scissors, as well as subclasses of coordination and common interest games. The best response correspondences in circulant games induce a partition on each player{\textquoteright}s set of pure strategies into equivalence classes. In any Nash Equilibrium, all strategies within one class are either played with strictly positive or with zero probability. We further show that, strikingly, a single parameter fully determines the exact number and the structure of all Nash equilibria (pure and mixed) in these games. The parameter itself only depends on the position of the largest payoff in the first row of one of the player{\textquoteright}s payoff matrix.