Population Games

Population games are stochastic processes which explicitly model Nash's (1950) mass action interpretation of Nash equilibrium. The mass action interpretation envisions a population of players for each position in the game, and that players are randomly matched for play. The hope is that the long-run behavior of the processes can be described by a Nash equilibrium. Recent analyses of these population processes finds that sometimes this hope is realized, and sometimes not. Moreover, when it is realized, some Nash equilibria are favored over others. This paper surveys the new literature on poulation games, and discusses the application of population game techniques to strategic situations other than $N$-player random-matching population games.