Lectures (Video)
- 1. Introduction
- 2. Putting yourselves into other people's shoes
- 3. Iterative deletion and the median-voter theorem
- 4. Best responses in soccer and business partnerships
- 5. Nash equilibrium: bad fashion and bank runs
- 6. Nash equilibrium: dating and Cournot
- 7. Nash equilibrium: shopping, standing and voting on a line
- 8. Nash equilibrium: location, segregation and randomization
- 9. Mixed strategies in theory and tennis
- 10. Mixed strategies in baseball, dating and paying your taxes
- 11. Evolutionary stability: cooperation, mutation, and equilibrium
- 12. Evolutionary stability: social convention, aggression, and cycles
- 13. Sequential games: moral hazard, incentives, and hungry lions
- 14. Backward induction: commitment, spies, and first-mover
- 15. Backward induction: chess, strategies, and credible threats
- 16. Backward induction: reputation and duels
- 17. Backward induction: ultimatums and bargaining
- 18. Imperfect information: information sets and sub-game
- 19. Subgame perfect equilibrium: matchmaking and strategic investments
- 20. Subgame perfect equilibrium: wars of attrition
- 21. Repeated games: cooperation vs. the end game
- 22. Repeated games: cheating, punishment, and outsourcing
- 23. Asymmetric information: silence, signaling and suffering education
- 24. Asymmetric information: auctions and the winner's curse
Game Theory
Course Summary
This course is based on ECON 159 Game Theory, Fall 2007 made available by Yale University: Open Yale under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license.
This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere. The course is taught by Prof. Ben Polak who is a Professor of Economics and Management in the Department of Economics and the School of Management at Yale University.
Reading Material
1. Thinking StrategicallyA. Dixit and B. Nalebuff. Thinking Strategically, Norton 1991
2. An Introduction to Game Theory
J. Watson. Strategy: An Introduction to Game Theory, Norton 2002
3. Strategies and Games: Theory And Practice
P.K. Dutta. Strategies and Games: Theory And Practice, MIT 1999
(Click the button below to see a preview of the book)
Course Material
1. Exams and solutionsOther Resources
1. Game TheoryDrew Fudenberg, Jean Tirole, Game Theory, 8th Edition, MIT Press, 2002, ISBN 0262061414, 9780262061414.
(Click the button below to see a preview of the book)
2. Game theory: a nontechnical introduction
Morton D. Davis, Game theory: a nontechnical introduction, Courier Dover Publications, 1997, ISBN 0486296725, 9780486296722.
(Click the button below to see a preview of the book)
Software
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