On Ambiguities in the Interpretation of Game Trees
Joseph Yehuda Halpern · Games and Economic Behavior · 1997
Piccione and Rubinstein have pointed out ambiguities in the interpretation of games of imperfect recall. They claim that a player in such a game may be time inconsistent. Here, it is argued that the apparent time inconsistency arises from implicit assumptions regarding what the player knows when he reconsiders his strategy, what he will remember if he changes his strategy, and how the node at which reconsideration takes place is chosen. A model is proposed that allows us—indeed, almost forces us—to make these issues explicit. Once these issues are made explicit, time inconsistency seems less inconsistent.Journal of Economic LiteratureClassification Numbers: C70, D80.