On N-person stochastic games by denumerable state space

Abstract

This paper considers non-cooperative N-person stochastic games with a countable state space and compact metric action spaces. We concentrate upon the average return per unit time criterion for which the existence of an equilibrium policy is established under a number of recurrency conditions with respect to the transition probability matrices associated with the stationary policies. These results are obtained by establishing the existence of total discounted return equilibrium policies, for each discount factor α ∈ [0, 1) and by showing that under each one of the aforementioned recurrency conditions, average return equilibrium policies appear as limit policies of sequences of discounted return equilibrium policies, with discount factor tending to one.Finally, we review and extend the results that are known for the case where both the state space and the action spaces are finite.