Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-mathematics-course-of-the-university-of-cambridge/2013/iii/paper-38/6/b/solution

A security level payoff maximizes what a player guarantees against the opponent. Let be the row player's probability of the first action. Its guaranteed payoff is
The decreasing and increasing terms cross at , attaining ; moving either way lowers the smaller term. For the column player, any mixture has zero payoff against the first row, while its second-row payoff is nonnegative. Therefore and
The feasible set is the convex hull of the four joint pure-action payoff vectors. Its upper Pareto frontier connects to to . Write the row payoff as and column payoff as . On the first Pareto frontier segment, for . The Nash product is
a concave quadratic with derivative , maximized at , , giving product . On the portion of the other Pareto frontier segment satisfying bargaining individual rationality, and . Its product derivative is positive throughout, so its largest product is at , smaller than . All dominated points can be discarded by Pareto efficiency. Consequently
This payoff is implemented by a correlated payoff lottery choosing the payoff with probability and with probability . The convex hull permits such lotteries over joint outcomes; it is not restricted to independent mixed strategies.

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