The Scope of Aggregative Games

Noncooperative games in which each player’s payo¤ function depends on an additively separable function of every player’s choice variable may be transformed into an aggregative game, which may be analysed using the concept of ‘share functions’. The resulting approach avoids the proliferation of dimensions as the number of players is increased. We show how this approach may be exploited to analyze several common models that arise in analyses of monopolistic competition, public goods, and rent-seeking contests. Acknowledgement : Much of the …rst author’s work on an early version of this paper was undertaken while he was a Visiting Scholar at the Center for Economic Studies, University of Munich. The support of the Center is gratefully acknowledged. We are also grateful to Martin Jensen for helpful comments on this material.