This book discusses stochastic game theory and related concepts. Topics focused upon in the book include matrix games, finite, infinite, and undiscounted stochastic games, n-player cooperative games, minimax theorem, and more. In addition to important definitions and theorems, the book provides readers with a range of problem-solving techniques and exercises. This book is of value to graduate students and readers of probability and statistics alike.

This book for beginning graduate students presents a course on stochastic games and the mathematical methods used in their analysis.

This volume is based on lectures given at the NATO Advanced Study Institute on "Stochastic Games and Applications," which took place at Stony Brook, NY, USA, July 1999. It gives the editors great pleasure to present it on the occasion of L.S. Shapley's eightieth birthday, and on the fiftieth "birthday" of his seminal paper "Stochastic Games," with which this volume opens. We wish to thank NATO for the grant that made the Institute and this volume possible, and the Center for Game Theory in Economics of the State University of New York at Stony Brook for hosting this event. We also wish to thank the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, for providing continuing financial support, without which this project would never have been completed. In particular, we are grateful to our editorial assistant Mike Borns, whose work has been indispensable. We also would like to acknowledge the support of the Ecole Poly tech nique, Paris, and the Israel Science Foundation. March 2003 Abraham Neyman and Sylvain Sorin ix STOCHASTIC GAMES L.S. SHAPLEY University of California at Los Angeles Los Angeles, USA 1. Introduction In a stochastic game the play proceeds by steps from position to position, according to transition probabilities controlled jointly by the two players.

Stochastic games provide a versatile model for reactive systems that are affected by random events. This dissertation advances the algorithmic theory of stochastic games to incorporate multiple players, whose objectives are not necessarily conflicting. The basis of this work is a comprehensive complexity-theoretic analysis of the standard game-theoretic solution concepts in the context of stochastic games over a finite state space. One main result is that the constrained existence of a Nash equilibrium becomes undecidable in this setting. This impossibility result is accompanied by several positive results, including efficient algorithms for natural special cases.

In the last twenty years extensive research has been devoted to a better understanding of the stable and other closely related infinitely divisible mod els. Stamatis Cambanis, a distinguished educator and researcher, played a special leadership role in the development of these research efforts, particu larly related to stable processes from the early seventies until his untimely death in April '95. This commemorative volume consists of a collection of research articles devoted to reviewing the state of the art of this and other rapidly developing research and to explore new directions of research in these fields. The volume is a tribute to the Life and Work of Stamatis by his students, friends, and colleagues whose personal and professional lives he has deeply touched through his generous insights and dedication to his profession. Before the idea of this volume was conceived, two conferences were held in the memory of Stamatis. The first was organized by the University of Athens and the Athens University of Economics and was held in Athens during December 18-19, 1995. The second was a significant part of a Spe cial IMS meeting held at the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during October 17-19, 1996. It is the selfless effort of sev eral people that brought about these conferences. We believe that this is an appropriate place to acknowledge their effort; and on behalf of all the participants, we extend sincere thanks to all these persons.

Résumé : "This will be a two-part handbook on Dynamic Game Theory and part of the Springer Reference program. Part I will be on the fundamentals and theory of dynamic games. It will serve as a quick reference and a source of detailed exposure to topics in dynamic games for a broad community of researchers, educators, practitioners, and students. Each topic will be covered in 2-3 chapters with one introducing basic theory and the other one or two covering recent advances and/or special topics. Part II will be on applications in fields such as economics, management science, engineering, biology, and the social sciences."