Correlated equilibrium as a stable standard of behavior

Abstract. We study the concept of correlated equilibrium within the framework of social situations (Greenberg 1990) and find that the unique optimistic stable standard of behavior (OSSB) of an appropriately defined correlated situation is nothing but the set of correlated equilibria. We generalize this situation in a natural way to accommodate coalitional deviations, and define the strong correlated situation. As the unique OSSB of this new situation, we derive a strong refinement of the set of correlated equilibria which we call strong correlated equilibrium. We analyse our concept and compare it with other existing notions using several examples.