A Note on Backward Induction, Iterative Elimination of Weakly Dominated Strategies, and Voting in Binary Agendas

Finite perfect information extensive (FPIE) games are quite well-understood: backward induction yields all of the pure strategy subgame perfect equilibria of such games. Iterative elimination of weakly dominated strategies (IEWDS), which can be hazardous in general games due to orderdependence of outcomes, can be much better behaved. In fact, for a large class of FPIE games, the outcomes of IEWDS match quite well with the outcomes of backward induction.