Multiple-Population Discrete-Time Mean Field Games with Discounted and Total Payoffs: The Existence of Equilibria

Abstract

In the paper we present a model of discrete-time mean-field game with several populations of players. Mean-field games with multiple populations of the players have only been studied in the literature in the continuous-time setting. The main results of this article are the first stationary and Markov mean-field equilibrium existence theorems for discrete-time mean-field games of this type. We consider two payoff criteria: discounted payoff and total payoff. The results are provided under some rather general assumptions on one-step reward functions and individual transition kernels of the players. In addition, the results for total payoff case, when applied to a single population, extend the theory of mean-field games also by relaxing some strong assumptions used in the existing literature.