Categorization in Games: A Bias-Variance Perspective
(2025) In Working Papers- Abstract
- We develop a framework for categorization in games, applicable both to multistage
games of complete information and static games of incomplete information.
Players use categories to form coarse beliefs about their opponents’
behavior. Players best-respond given these beliefs, as in analogy-based expectations
equilibria. Categories are related to strategies via the requirements
that categories contain a sufficient amount of observations and exhibit sufficient
within-category similarity, in line with the bias-variance trade-off. We apply
our framework to classic games including the chainstore game and adverse selection
games, thereby suggesting novel predictions for these applications.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/023b8120-ad47-4c69-bdf9-dd199412d0a6
- author
- Jehiel, Philippe and Mohlin, Erik LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-09
- type
- Working paper/Preprint
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Bounded rationality, Categorization, Bias-variance trade-off, Adverse selection, Chainstore parado, C70, C73, D82, D83, D91
- in
- Working Papers
- issue
- 2025:7
- pages
- 66 pages
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- 023b8120-ad47-4c69-bdf9-dd199412d0a6
- date added to LUP
- 2025-09-09 13:39:40
- date last changed
- 2025-09-09 13:39:40
@misc{023b8120-ad47-4c69-bdf9-dd199412d0a6, abstract = {{We develop a framework for categorization in games, applicable both to multistage<br/>games of complete information and static games of incomplete information.<br/>Players use categories to form coarse beliefs about their opponents’<br/>behavior. Players best-respond given these beliefs, as in analogy-based expectations<br/>equilibria. Categories are related to strategies via the requirements<br/>that categories contain a sufficient amount of observations and exhibit sufficient<br/>within-category similarity, in line with the bias-variance trade-off. We apply<br/>our framework to classic games including the chainstore game and adverse selection<br/>games, thereby suggesting novel predictions for these applications.}}, author = {{Jehiel, Philippe and Mohlin, Erik}}, keywords = {{Bounded rationality; Categorization; Bias-variance trade-off; Adverse selection; Chainstore parado; C70; C73; D82; D83; D91}}, language = {{eng}}, note = {{Working Paper}}, number = {{2025:7}}, series = {{Working Papers}}, title = {{Categorization in Games: A Bias-Variance Perspective}}, url = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/227310315/WP25_7.pdf}}, year = {{2025}}, }