Quantum game theory

My friends working at University of Tokyo recently published an article about quantum game theory on Journal of Physics.

Yohei Sekiguchi, Kiri Sakahara, and Takashi Sato (2010), "Uniqueness of Nash equilibria in a quantum Cournot duopoly game," Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical, Volume 43, Number 14

Here is a link to the article. Congratulations!

Unfortunately, I don't know anything about quantum game theory. According to wikipedia (link), it is explained as follows:

Quantum game theory is an extension of classical game theory to the quantum domain. It differs from classical game theory in three primary ways:

1. Superposed initial states,
2. Quantum entanglement of initial states,
3. Superposition of strategies to be used on the initial states.

Anyways, it is surprising that game theorists publish their papers on physics journals. Hum, quantum game theory might be worth trying to study...


During the conference in Brazil (link), I had a chance to attend one of the presentations by physicists, whose topic is not about quantum game theory though:

"Distinguishing the Opponents: Mutual Cooperation is Never Destroyed"
by Lucas Lages Wardil (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais)

The paper investigates the evolution in network structures. Unlike previous works, he considers that each agent can take a contingent action, i.e., strategy, rather than a unconditional action which has been commonly assumed in the literature. That is, depending on whom to play with, each agent will take different actions; with a certain updating process each agent changes her (contingent) action against a specific opponent. In this framework with extended agents' types, he shows that cooperation (in prisoner's dilemma) becomes easy to sustain under certain networks and imitation dynamics.

In evolutionary biology, where this kind of research is widely investigated, it is unrealistic to regard contingent actions as a agents' type, because a type is considered to be genetic. In Economics, we usually examine contingent action plans in rational frameworks but it is uncommon in bounded rational frameworks such as evolutionary game. The reason (I guess) is that it is difficult to argue why and how an agent with such a complicated action plan follows a irrational/heuristic adjustment process to update her behaviors.

Anyways, I found this paper by a physicist very interesting. In some sense, his research connects biology and economics (although further justification/interpretation seems to be necessary to apply his models in these fields). There might be many things that we economists can learn from physicists.