This chapter examines the conceptual foundations of the concept of strategic equilibrium and its various variants and refinements. The emphasis is very much on the underlying ideas rather than on any technical details.After an examination of some pre-equilibrium ideas, in particular the concept...

This chapter of the Handbook of Game Theory (Vol. 3) provides an overview of the theory of Nash equilibrium and its refinements. The starting-point is the rationalistic approach to games and the question whether there exists a convincing, self-enforcing theory of rational behavior in...