Nash rationalization of collective choice over lotteries

To test the joint hypothesis that players in a noncooperative game (allowing mixtures over pure strategies) consult an independent preference relation and select a Nash equilibrium, it suffices to study the reaction of the revealed collective choice upon changes in the space of strategies available to the players. The joint hypothesis is supported if the revealed choices satisfy an extended version of Richter’s congruence axiom together with a contraction–expansion axiom that models the noncooperative behavior. In addition, we provide sufficient and necessary conditions for a binary relation to have an independent ordering extension, and for individual choices over lotteries to be rationalizable by an independent preference relation.