We give a robust characterization of Nash equilibrium by postulating coherent behavior across varying games: Nash equilibrium is the only solution concept that satisfies consequentialism, consistency, and rationality. As a consequence, every equilibrium refinement violates at least one of these properties. We moreover show that every solution concept that approximately satisfies consequentialism, consistency, and rationality returns approximate Nash equilibria. The latter approximation can be made arbitrarily good by increasing the approximation of the axioms. This result extends to various natural subclasses of games such as two-player zero-sum games, potential games, and graphical games.

翻译：本文通过假定跨不同博弈中的一致性行为，给出了纳什均衡的一种鲁棒刻画：纳什均衡是唯一满足后果主义、一致性和合理性这三个性质的解概念。由此，任何均衡的精炼都会至少违反其中一项性质。进一步地，我们证明，任何近似满足后果主义、一致性和合理性的解概念都会返回近似纳什均衡。通过提高这些公理的近似程度，该近似可以任意精确。这一结论可推广至博弈的各种自然子类，如两人零和博弈、势博弈和图博弈。