Nonasymptotic mean-field games

Mean-field games have been studied under the assumption of very large number of players. For such large systems, the basic idea consists to approximate large games by a stylized game model with a continuum of players. The approach has been shown to be useful in some applications. However, the stylized game model with continuum of decision-makers is rarely observed in practice and the approximation proposed in the asymptotic regime is meaningless for networked systems with few entities. In this paper we propose a mean-field framework that is suitable not only for large systems but also for a small world with few number of entities. The applicability of the proposed framework is illustrated through a dynamic auction with asymmetric valuation distributions.