Strategic Teaching and Learning in Games

Abstract

We show there is no uncoupled learning heuristic leading to Nash equilibrium in all finite games that a player has an incentive to adopt, that would be evolutionary stable, or that could “learn itself.” Rather, a player has an incentive to strategically teach a learning opponent to secure at least the Stackelberg leader payoff. This observation holds even when we restrict to generic games, two-player games, potential games, games with strategic complements, or 2 × 2 games, in which learning is known to be “nice.” It also applies to uncoupled learning heuristics leading to correlated equilibria, rationalizability, iterated admissibility, or minimal CURB sets. (JEL C73, D83)