Partition Equilibrium

We introduce partition equilibrium and study its existence in resource selection games (RSG). In partition equilibrium the agents are partitioned into coalitions, and only deviations by the prescribed coalitions are considered. This is in difference to the classical concept of strong equilibrium according to which any subset of the agents may deviate. In resource selection games, each agent selects a resource from a set of resources, and its payoff is an increasing (or non-decreasing) function of the number of agents selecting its resource. While it has been shown that strong equilibrium exists in resource selection games, these games do not possess super-strong equilibrium, in which a fruitful deviation benefits at least one deviator without hurting any other deviator, even in the case of two identical resources with increasing cost functions. Similarly, strong equilibrium does not exist for that restricted two identical resources setting when the game is played repeatedly. We prove that for any given partition there exists a super-strong equilibrium for resource selection games with identical resources with increasing cost functions; we also show similar existence results for a variety of other classes of resource selection games. For the case of repeated games we provide characterizations for the partitions under which strong equilibrium exists. Together, our work introduces a natural concept, which turns out to lead to positive and applicable results in one of the basic domains studied in the literature.