Analysis of the expected density of internal equilibria in random evolutionary multi-player multi-strategy games

Abstract In this paper, we study the distribution and behaviour of internal equilibria in a d-player n-strategy random evolutionary game where the game payo matrix is generated from normal distributions. The study of this paper reveals and exploits interesting connections between evolutionary game theory and random polynomial theory. The main novelties of the paper are some qualitative and quantitative results on the expected density, fn;d, and the expected number, E(n; d), of (stable) internal equilibria. Firstly, we show that in multi-player two-strategy games, they behave asymptotically as pd 􀀀 1 as d is suciently large. Secondly, we prove that they are monotone functions of d. We also make a conjecture for games with more than two strategies. Thirdly, we provide numerical simulations for our analytical results and to support the conjecture. As consequences of our analysis, some qualitative and quantitative results on the distribution of zeros of a random Bernstein polynomial are also obtained.