Mehmet S Ismail

Biographic Data

ID5996932
NAMEMehmet S Ismail
GIVEN NAMESMehmet S
FAMILY NAMEIsmail
SIGNATUREISMAIL M S
AFFILIATIONSKing's College London
ORCID0000-0002-3232-0776
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS6
TOTAL CITATIONS0
WORKS AS AUTHOR6
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR2022
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2026
H-INDEX0

  • Social preferences and expected utility

    Open AccessMehmet S Ismail, Mehmet Mars Seven et al.ARTICLETheory and Decision2026

    It is well known that ex-ante social preferences and expected utility are not always compatible. In this note, we introduce a novel framework that naturally separates social preferences from selfish preferences to answer the following question: What specific forms of social preferences can be accommodated within the expected utility paradigm? In a departure from existing frameworks, our framework shows that ex-ante social preferences can be recon…

  • Mill’s harm principle, rationality, and Pareto optimality in games

    Open AccessShaun Hargreaves Heap, Mehmet S IsmailARTICLESynthese2025References: 21

    Mill’s classic argument for liberty requires that people’s exercise of freedom should be governed by the harm principle (MHP): that is, an action should not harm another. In this paper, we develop the concept of a Millian harm equilibrium (MHE) in n -person games where players maximize utility subject to the constraint of an MHP. Our main result is in the spirit of the fundamental theorems of welfare economics. We show that for every initial ‘ref…

  • A connection between von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility and symmetric potential games

    Open AccessMehmet S Ismail, Ronald PeetersARTICLETheory and Decision2024

    This paper establishes a previously unexplored connection between expected utility theory and potential games. Starting with a decision problem with a complete preference relation over lotteries on a finite set of alternatives, we construct a two-person symmetric game using a payoff function that represents the preference relation, and show that if the preference relation satisfies the von Neumann-Morgenstern expected utility axioms then the cons…

  • Exploring the constraints on artificial general intelligence

    Open AccessMehmet S IsmailARTICLEMathematical Social Sciences2024References: 20

    The potential emergence of artificial general intelligence (AGI) systems has sparked intense debate among researchers, policymakers, and the public due to their potential to surpass human intelligence in all domains. This note argues that for an AI to be considered “general”, it should achieve superhuman performance not only in zero-sum games but also in general-sum games, where winning or losing is not clearly defined. In this note, I propose a …

  • Proportional resource allocation in dynamic n -player Blotto games

    Open AccessNejat Anbarci, Nejat Anbarcı et al.ARTICLEMathematical Social Sciences2023References: 34

    In this note, we introduce a general model of dynamic n-player multi-battle Blotto contests in which asymmetric resources and non-homogeneous battlefield prizes are possible. Each player’s probability of winning the prize in a battlefield is governed by a ratio-form contest success function and players’ resource allocation on that battlefield. We show that there exists a pure subgame perfect equilibrium in which players allocate their resources i…

  • Every normal-form game has a Pareto-optimal nonmyopic equilibrium

    Open AccessSteven J Bram, Steven J Brams et al.ARTICLETheory and Decision2022

    It is well known that Nash equilibria may not be Pareto-optimal; worse, a unique Nash equilibrium may be Pareto-dominated, as in Prisoners’ Dilemma. By contrast, we prove a previously conjectured result: every finite normal-form game of complete information and common knowledge has at least one Pareto-optimal nonmyopic equilibrium (NME) in pure strategies, which we define and illustrate. The outcome it gives, which depends on where play starts, m…