Antoine Hochart

Hypergraph conditions for the solvability of the ergodic equation for zero-sum games

The ergodic equation is a basic tool in the study of mean-payoff stochastic games. Its solvability entails that the mean payoff is independent of the initial state. Moreover, optimal stationary strategies are readily obtained from its solution. In this paper, we give a general sufficient condition for the solvability of the ergodic equation, for a game with finite state space but arbitrary action spaces. This condition involves a pair of directed hypergraphs depending only on the “growth at infinity” of the Shapley operator of the game. This refines a recent result of the authors which only applied to games with bounded payments, as well as earlier nonlinear fixed point results for order preserving maps, involving graph conditions.

Generic uniqueness of the bias vector of mean payoff zero-sum games

Zero-sum mean payoff games can be studied by means of a nonlinear spectral problem. When the state space is finite, the latter consists in finding an eigenpair (u; λ) solution of T(u) = λ1 + u where T:ℝn → ℝn is the Shapley (dynamic programming) operator, λ is a scalar, 1 is the unit vector, and u ∈ ℝn. The scalar λ yields the mean payoff per time unit, and the vector u, called the bias, allows one to determine optimal stationary strategies. The existence of the eigenpair (u; λ) is generally related to ergodicity conditions. A basic issue is to understand for which classes of games the bias vector is unique (up to an additive constant). In this paper, we consider perfect information zero-sum stochastic games with finite state and action spaces, thinking of the transition payments as variable parameters, transition probabilities being fixed. We identify structural conditions on the support of the transition probabilities which guarantee that the spectral problem is solvable for all values of the transition payments. Then, we show that the bias vector, thought of as a function of the transition payments, is generically unique (up to an additive constant). The proof uses techniques of max-plus (tropical) algebra and nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theory.