{"paper":{"title":"A Theory of Network Games Part 1: Utility Representations","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["cs.GT"],"primary_cat":"econ.TH","authors_text":"Evan Sadler, Joseph Root","submitted_at":"2026-02-17T22:54:39Z","abstract_excerpt":"We provide interpretable axiomatic foundations for utilities used in network games and identify several principled generalizations. First, we demonstrate that a ubiquitous feature of network games, bilateral strategic interactions, is equivalent to having player utilities that are additively separable across opponents. Common utilities based on a linear aggregate of opponent actions are strategically equivalent to additively separable utilities. Moreover, assuming real-valued actions, we show that a constant rate of substitution between opponents implies a utility that is linear in opponent ac"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2602.16071","kind":"arxiv","version":3},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2602.16071/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}