Intermediate Microeconomics -- Game theory

Syllabus 2006-7

Final Paper -- Axelrod and the Repeated Prisoner's Dilemma -- see Chapter 12 under Readings for the articles by Huber, Olson and Axelrod.

Class Handouts

• Cournot Duopoly Example
• Mixed Strategies
• John Duffy on Mixed Strategies
  Excellent review of Dixit plus a very interesting Mall Game.

• Asymmetric Information
  Links to papers by Akerlof, Spence and Stiglitz on the economics of information.
• Spence's Job Signaling model
  Notes and graph.
• Incomplete Information
  Links to works by and about John Harsanyi. Myerson's papers are especially recommended for an overview.

Fun links

Readings in Game Theory

• John Duffy course on Game Theory, using the Dixit-Skeat text, with excellent Power Point slides.

• Mike Shor . Course on game theory, again using the Dixit-Skeath text. Very effective PowerPoint lectures.
  Everyone should take a look at his introductory lecture .
  Shor provides detailed solutions to several of the end of chapter problems in Dixit-Skeath.

• Atin Basu
  Game Theory course at Virginia Military Institute.
  Powerpoints nicely summarizing the Dixit-Skeath text, with some additional material.

• GameTheory.net
  Extensive teaching links, including on-line quizzes and many playable games.

• David K. Levine
  A most useful collection of links to game theory sites.

• Gambit
  Game theory software by Theodore Turocy, Richard McKelvey, and Andrew McLellan.

Game theorists

• Avinash Dixit Dixit has some supplementary material for the text, including a link to his briefest summary of game theory.

• Alvin Roth

• Martin Osborne

• Ariel Rubenstein See also Rubenstein's Web-based experiments in Game Theory .

• Roger Meyerson
  Inaugural Lecture (2002) is an excellent brief survey of the place of game theory in economics. A longer version is "Nash Equilibrium and the History of Economic Theory in the Journal of Economic Literature , 37(1999): 1067-1082.
  Political Economics and the Weimar Disaster applies game theory to the history of Weimar Germany and the rise of Nazism.

• Kyle Bagwell
  International and industrial organization applications of game theory.
  See especially " Game theory and Industrial Organization" , a chapter in the Handbook of Game Theory (edited by Robert Aumann and Sergio Hart).

  Sergiu Hart
  Don't miss Hart's Humor Page

• Joseph Harrington

Applications to specific fields -- Business, Politics, Law

• Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff Site for Co-optetition , on applications to business. See also Adam Brandenburger's Home Page for his course on business applications.

• Charles Holt Game Theory and Experimental Economics See also Holt's Classroom Games page.

• Comlabgames Web-based game theory software from Carnegie Mellon.

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  Tom Schelling and Robert Aumann

  
  Winners of the Nobel Prize for Economics for 2005.
  Links to summaries of their works and to their own writings.

  History of Game Theory See especially the article on John Nash by Matthew Ryan
  and the articles on Cournot.

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  Expected Utility

  The St. Petersburg Paradox, von-Neumann-Morgenstern, Allais paradox, regret theory.

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