Self-confirming Games: Unawareness, Discovery, and Equilibrium

Abstract: Equilibrium notions for games with unawareness in the literature cannot be interpreted as steady-states of a learning process because players may discover novel actions during play. In this sense, many games with unawareness are "self-destroying" as a player's representation of the game must change after playing it once. We define discovery processes where at each state there is an extensive-form game with unawareness that together with the players' play determines the transition to possibly another extensive-form games with unawareness in which players are now aware of actions that they have previously discovered. A discovery process is rationalizable if players play extensive-form rationalizable strategies in each game with unawareness. We show that for any game with unawareness there is a rationalizable discovery process that leads to a self-confirming game that possesses an extensive-form rationalizable self-confirming equilibrium. This notion of equilibrium can be interpreted as steady-state of a learning and discovery process.