Selected work

Representative Papers

Three Barriers to Kantian Cooperation under Inequality

Jun 20, 2026

This study investigates the coordination and distributional barriers to voluntary adoption of Kantian cooperation under inequality. Building on a two-agent voluntary contribution model with logarithmic utility, it compares Nash equilibria and multiplicative Kantian equilibria in both contribution and private consumption spaces. The analysis systematically identifies and reconstructs three distinct obstacles that arise when transitioning from Nash to Kantian equilibria: non-Pareto-improving outcomes, allocation conflicts induced by strategic space parameterization, and coordination difficulties along a continuum of Pareto-efficient allocations. The findings reveal that under high inequality, the poorer agent may prefer the Nash outcome; alternative parameterizations generate divergent distributional implications; and the continuity of the Pareto frontier intensifies coordination challenges. Collectively, these results delineate theoretical boundaries for the feasibility and sustainability of Kantian cooperation.

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Moral Geometry: Endogenous Scaling in Nash-Kantian Games

Jun 20, 2026

This study addresses the strategic vulnerability of Kantian equilibria under multiplicative transformations, which lack invariance to monotonic rescalings of strategies and thereby place Kantian agents at a disadvantage. To resolve this, the paper introduces an endogenous, smoothly increasing scaling function as a commitment device that redefines deviation assessments without altering material payoffs or feasible sets. Through game-theoretic analysis, elasticity-weighted modeling, and construction of local elasticity ratios—illustrated via Cournot and differentiated Bertrand models—the mechanism yields distinct outcomes: under strategic complementarity, it strictly outperforms the Nash equilibrium and attains Stackelberg leader payoffs; under strategic substitutability, it effectively avoids the payoff losses associated with naive Kantian behavior, approaching but never exceeding the opponent’s Nash payoff, thus exhibiting a dual offensive-defensive character.

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Can LLM Teams Play What? Where? When?

May 28, 2026

This study addresses performance bottlenecks of large language models (LLMs) in tasks requiring indirect reasoning, cultural knowledge, and collaborative hypothesis testing by systematically evaluating multi-agent LLM teams in a “What? Where? When?” quiz game. The authors construct teams comprising six open-source models and implement three interaction protocols—voting, silent coordination, and verbose discussion—evaluated on 572 questions from the 2025 Chinese General Knowledge (ChGK) dataset. Results demonstrate that explanatory communication significantly mitigates performance degradation caused by model disagreement, and that a team-leader mechanism exhibits no self-preference bias. The optimal collaborative strategy improves accuracy by 20 percentage points, achieving 44.23%—approaching human team performance—and validates the efficacy of multi-agent interaction in answer selection and error filtering.

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The Full Pareto Frontier as Kantian Equilibria

May 19, 2026

This study addresses the limitation of Multiplicative Kantian equilibria in failing to cover the Pareto frontier due to constraints imposed by the parameterization of the strategy space. To overcome this, the authors propose a coordinate translation—specifically, imposing lower bounds on actions—to reconstruct the strategy space. Through geometric analysis leveraging the common tangent property of players’ indifference curves, they constructively demonstrate that for any interior Pareto-efficient outcome, there exists a translation under which it becomes a Multiplicative Kantian equilibrium. This result establishes, for the first time, that such equilibria can span the entire set of interior points on the Pareto frontier, thereby decoupling efficiency from fairness: any normative criterion can be implemented without compromising Pareto optimality. This significantly broadens the theoretical applicability and explanatory power of Kantian equilibria.

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Strategy Rescaling and the Stability of Kantian Optimization

May 01, 2026

This study addresses the limitations of Multiplicative Kantian Equilibrium, whose outcomes are sensitive to the arbitrary choice of strategy measurement scale due to a lack of strategic equivalence and are vulnerable to free-riding by Nash-type players. Focusing on symmetric games, the authors propose a rescaling of strategies that eliminates the free-riding advantage while preserving Pareto efficiency among Kantian agents. By integrating game-theoretic analysis, subgame perfect equilibrium concepts, and evolutionary stability (ESS) theory, they demonstrate that when types are endogenously selected, all players strictly prefer Kantian optimization. Moreover, this strategy emerges as a stable dominant strategy under both dynamic and evolutionary frameworks. The findings reveal that strategic non-equivalence—typically viewed as a drawback—can instead be leveraged to construct robust cooperative mechanisms.

0 citationsRead paper

Recent publications

Latest Papers

Three Barriers to Kantian Cooperation under Inequality

Jun 20, 2026

This study investigates the coordination and distributional barriers to voluntary adoption of Kantian cooperation under inequality. Building on a two-agent voluntary contribution model with logarithmic utility, it compares Nash equilibria and multiplicative Kantian equilibria in both contribution and private consumption spaces. The analysis systematically identifies and reconstructs three distinct obstacles that arise when transitioning from Nash to Kantian equilibria: non-Pareto-improving outcomes, allocation conflicts induced by strategic space parameterization, and coordination difficulties along a continuum of Pareto-efficient allocations. The findings reveal that under high inequality, the poorer agent may prefer the Nash outcome; alternative parameterizations generate divergent distributional implications; and the continuity of the Pareto frontier intensifies coordination challenges. Collectively, these results delineate theoretical boundaries for the feasibility and sustainability of Kantian cooperation.

0 citationsRead paper

Moral Geometry: Endogenous Scaling in Nash-Kantian Games

Jun 20, 2026

This study addresses the strategic vulnerability of Kantian equilibria under multiplicative transformations, which lack invariance to monotonic rescalings of strategies and thereby place Kantian agents at a disadvantage. To resolve this, the paper introduces an endogenous, smoothly increasing scaling function as a commitment device that redefines deviation assessments without altering material payoffs or feasible sets. Through game-theoretic analysis, elasticity-weighted modeling, and construction of local elasticity ratios—illustrated via Cournot and differentiated Bertrand models—the mechanism yields distinct outcomes: under strategic complementarity, it strictly outperforms the Nash equilibrium and attains Stackelberg leader payoffs; under strategic substitutability, it effectively avoids the payoff losses associated with naive Kantian behavior, approaching but never exceeding the opponent’s Nash payoff, thus exhibiting a dual offensive-defensive character.

0 citationsRead paper

Can LLM Teams Play What? Where? When?

May 28, 2026

This study addresses performance bottlenecks of large language models (LLMs) in tasks requiring indirect reasoning, cultural knowledge, and collaborative hypothesis testing by systematically evaluating multi-agent LLM teams in a “What? Where? When?” quiz game. The authors construct teams comprising six open-source models and implement three interaction protocols—voting, silent coordination, and verbose discussion—evaluated on 572 questions from the 2025 Chinese General Knowledge (ChGK) dataset. Results demonstrate that explanatory communication significantly mitigates performance degradation caused by model disagreement, and that a team-leader mechanism exhibits no self-preference bias. The optimal collaborative strategy improves accuracy by 20 percentage points, achieving 44.23%—approaching human team performance—and validates the efficacy of multi-agent interaction in answer selection and error filtering.

0 citationsRead paper

The Full Pareto Frontier as Kantian Equilibria

May 19, 2026

This study addresses the limitation of Multiplicative Kantian equilibria in failing to cover the Pareto frontier due to constraints imposed by the parameterization of the strategy space. To overcome this, the authors propose a coordinate translation—specifically, imposing lower bounds on actions—to reconstruct the strategy space. Through geometric analysis leveraging the common tangent property of players’ indifference curves, they constructively demonstrate that for any interior Pareto-efficient outcome, there exists a translation under which it becomes a Multiplicative Kantian equilibrium. This result establishes, for the first time, that such equilibria can span the entire set of interior points on the Pareto frontier, thereby decoupling efficiency from fairness: any normative criterion can be implemented without compromising Pareto optimality. This significantly broadens the theoretical applicability and explanatory power of Kantian equilibria.

0 citationsRead paper

Strategy Rescaling and the Stability of Kantian Optimization

May 01, 2026

This study addresses the limitations of Multiplicative Kantian Equilibrium, whose outcomes are sensitive to the arbitrary choice of strategy measurement scale due to a lack of strategic equivalence and are vulnerable to free-riding by Nash-type players. Focusing on symmetric games, the authors propose a rescaling of strategies that eliminates the free-riding advantage while preserving Pareto efficiency among Kantian agents. By integrating game-theoretic analysis, subgame perfect equilibrium concepts, and evolutionary stability (ESS) theory, they demonstrate that when types are endogenously selected, all players strictly prefer Kantian optimization. Moreover, this strategy emerges as a stable dominant strategy under both dynamic and evolutionary frameworks. The findings reveal that strategic non-equivalence—typically viewed as a drawback—can instead be leveraged to construct robust cooperative mechanisms.

0 citationsRead paper