ORDER INDEPENDENCE FOR ITERATED WEAK DOMINANCE

In general, the result of the elimination of weakly dominated strategi es depends on order. We define nice weak dominance. Under nice weak do minance, order does not matter. We identify an important class of game s under which nice weak dominance and weak dominance are equivalent, a nd so the order under weak dominance does not matter. For all games, t he result of iterative nice weak dominance is an upper bound on the re sult from any order of weak dominance. The results strengthen the intu itive relationship between backward induction and weak dominance and s hed light on some computational problems relating to weak dominance. ( C) 1997 Academic Press.