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Nash and Pareto: New findings in game theory
Risks and returns, price equilibria, or systemic risk – if a situation involves multiple criteria or actors, concepts such as the Nash equilibrium and Pareto optimality can help in decision-making. So far, the Nash and Pareto concepts have been regarded as inherently different. Birgit Rudloff, deputy head of the Institute for Statistics and Mathematics at WU (Vienna University of Economics and Business), has now shown, however, that the two concepts coincide under certain conditions. If the Pareto optimization problem for any non-cooperative game is constructed in a specific way, the set of all Pareto optimal solutions coincides with the set of all Nash equilibria. This insight makes it possible to apply Pareto optimality methods and algorithms to Nash equilibria.