International Society of Dynamic Games

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

Consensus and Dissensus in Multi-population Multi-agent Systems

May 18, 2023
11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal time)

This hybrid seminar will take place at HEC Montréal, Hélène-Desmarais room (1st floor, blue sector) and will be webcast via the Zoom platform.

The talk will start with a general overview of mean field games (MFGs) approach to decision making in multi-agent dynamical systems in both model-based and model-free settings and discuss connections to finite-population games. Following this general introduction, the talk will focus on the structured setting of discrete-time infinite-horizon linear-quadratic-Gaussian dynamic games, where the players are partitioned into finitely-many populations with an underlying graph topology—a framework motivated by paradigms where consensus and dissensus co-exist. MFGs approach will be employed to arrive at approximate Nash equilibria, and learning algorithms will be presented for the model-free setting, along with sample complexity analysis.

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

Optimal control problems with a stochastic switching time: a marketing application

May 11, 2023  
11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal time)

Webinar link.

We consider a dynamic optimization problem where a firm plans their advertising strategy under the uncertainty that their production costs may abruptly increase at any time during the programming interval. We present two approaches that yield a close form solution to this two-stage optimal control problem: a backward approach, where the two periods are solved in reverse order, and a heterogeneous one, where a dedicated version of the maximum principle covers both stages simultaneously. The analytical solution is provided in a simple case, and numerical results are presented for the general case. To evaluate the importance of information about the risk of switching, we compare these results with those of a different scenario, where the planner is unaware of the possible switching time.

(With Alessandra Buratto and Luca Grosset.)

Dynamic Games and Applications Seminar

A Dynamic Model for Native Advertising

May 4, 2023
11:00 AM — 12:00 PM (Montreal Time)

Webinar link.

Native advertising is a marketing tool that aims to mimic the regular content of the platform on which it appears. Due to this striking resemblance, native advertising may be very effective, but it may also negatively influence the perceived credibility of the media on which it is placed. In our model, we consider a firm that invests in traditional and native advertising on a high-quality content communication platform which has to consider the trade-off between the profit gained by publishing native advertising and the consequent loss of credibility. We formalise the problem as a Stackelberg infinite-time horizon differential game where the media outlet is the leader. We compute a time-consistent open-loop equilibrium and obtain conditions under which it is optimal for the media to accept native advertising.

(With Alessandra Buratto and Luca Grosset)