Reverse Stackelberg Games, Part I: Basic Framework

The class of reverse Stackelberg games, also known as incentives, embodies a structure for sequential decision making that has been recognized as a suitable approach for hierarchical control problems like road tolling and electricity pricing. In this game, a leader player announces a mapping of the follower's decision space into the leader's decision space, after which a follower player determines his optimal decision variables. Compared to the original Stackelberg game, the reverse Stackelberg approach has several advantages that will be emphasized in this survey. Since the reverse Stackelberg game has been studied in different research areas, first a comprehensive overview is provided of the definition of the game. Further, several areas of application are stated. In the companion paper entitled 'Reverse Stackelberg Games, Part II: Results and Open Issues', main contributions are subsequently summarized along with several characteristics of the game and open issues that are relevant for further research, are presented.