Dynamic decision problems with cooperative and strategic agents and asymmetric information

Dynamic decision problems with cooperative and strategic agents and asymmetric information by Deepanshu Vasal Chair: Achilleas Anastasopoulos There exist many real world situations involving multiple decision makers with asymmetric information, such as communication systems, social networks, economic markets and many others. Through this dissertation, we attempt to enhance the conceptual understanding of such systems and provide analytical tools to characterize the optimum or equilibrium behavior. Specifically, we study four discrete time, decentralized decision problems in stochastic dynamical systems with cooperative and strategic agents. The first problem we consider is a relay channel where nodes’ queue lengths, modeled as conditionally independent Markov chains, are nodes’ private information, whereas nodes’ actions are publicly observed. This results in non-classical information pattern. Energy-delay tradeoff is studied for this channel through stochastic control techniques for cooperative agents. Extending this model for strategic users, in the second problem we study a general model with N strategic players having conditionally independent, Markovian types and publicly observed actions. This results in a dynamic game with asymmetric information. We present a forward/backward sequential decomposition algorithm to find a class of perfect Bayesian equilibria of the game. Using this methodology, in the third problem, we study a general two player dynamic LQG