Norms in Game Theory

This chapter summarizes two main views on norms and games as emerging in literature on game theory, social science, philosophy and artificial intelligence. The first view originates in the field of mechanism design or implementation theory and characterizes norms as mechanisms enforcing desirable social properties in classes of games. According to the second view, originating from work in the social sciences and evolutionary game theory, norms are studied via the notion of equilibrium and are viewed as emergent social contracts or conventions.