Games, Strategies, and Decision Making

This innovative textbook makes the tools and applications of game theory and strategic reasoning both fascinating and easy to understand. Each chapter focuses a specific strategic situation as a way of introducing core concepts informally at first, then more fully, with a minimum of mathematics. At the heart of the book is a diverse collection of strategic scenarios, not only from business and politics, but from history, fiction, sports, and everyday life as well. With this approach, students don't just learn clever answers to puzzles, but instead acquire genuine insights into human behaviour. Written for major courses in economics, business, political science, and international relations, this textbook is accessible to students across the undergraduate spectrum.

Table of Contents:
PART 1 Constructing A Game.- 1 Introduction to Strategic Reasoning 1.1 Introduction 1.2 A Sampling of Strategic Situations 1.3 Whetting Your Appetite: The Game of Concentration 1.4 Psychological Profile of a Player 1.5 Playing the Gender Pronoun Game.- 2. Building a Model of a Strategic Situation 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Extensive Form Games: Perfect Information 2.3 Extensive Form Games: Imperfect Information 2.4 What Is a Strategy? 2.5 Strategic Form Games 2.6 Moving from the Extensive Form and Strategic Form 2.7 Going from the Strategic Form to the Extensive Form 2.8 Common Knowledge 2.9 A Few More Issues in Modeling Games.- PART 2 Strategic Form Games.- 3. Eliminating the Impossible: Solving a Game when Rationality Is Common Knowledge 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Solving a Game when Players Are Rational 3.3 Solving a Game when Players Are Rational and Players Know that Players Are Rational 3.4 Solving a Game when Rationality Is Common Knowledge 3.5 Do people believe that people believe that people are rational? 3.6 Appendix: Strict and Weak Dominance 3.7 Appendix: Rationalizability (Advanced) 3.8 Appendix: Strict Dominance with Randomization.- 4. Stable Play: Nash Equilibria in Discrete Games with Two or Three Players 4.1 Defining Nash Equilibrium 4.2 Classic Two-Player Games 4.3 The Best-Reply Method 4.4 Three-Player Games 4.5 Foundations of Nash Equilibrium 4.6 Fictitious Play and Convergence to Nash Equilibrium4.6 Appendix: Formal Definition of Nash Equilibrium.- 5. Stable Play: Nash Equilibria in Discrete n-Player Games 5.1 Introduction5.2 Symmetric Games 5.3 Asymmetric Games 5.4 Selecting among Nash Equilibria.- 6. Stable Play: Nash Equilibria in Continuous Games6.1 Introduction 6.2 Solving for Nash Equilibria without Calculus 6.3 Solving for Nash Equilibria with Calculus 7. Keep ’Em Guessing: Randomized Strategies 7.1 Police Patrols and the Drug Trade 7.2 Making Decisions under Uncertainty 7.3 Mixed Strategies and Nash Equilibrium 7.4 Examples 7.5 Advanced Examples 7.6 Pessimism and Games of Pure Conflict 7.7.- Appendix: Formal Definition of Nash Equilibrium in Mixed Strategies.- PART 3 Extensive Form Games.- 8. Taking Turns: Sequential Games with Perfect Information.- 8.1 Introduction.- 8.2 Backward Induction and Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium.- 8.3 Examples.- 8.4 Waiting Games: Preemption and Attrition.- 8.5 Do People Reason Using Backward Induction?.- 9. Taking Turns in the Dark: Sequential Games with Imperfect Information.- 9.1 Introduction.- 9.2 Subgame Perfect Nash Equilibrium.- 9.3 Examples.- 9.4 Commitment.- 9.5 Forward Induction.- PART 4 Games of Incomplete Information.- 10. I Know Something You Don’t Know: Games with Private Information.- 10.1 Introduction.- 10.2 A Game of Incomplete Information: The Munich Agreement.- 10.3 Bayesian Games and Bayes–Nash Equilibrium.- 10.4 When All Players Have Private Information: Auctions.- 10.5 Voting on Committees and Juries.- 10.6 Appendix: Formal Definition of Bayes–Nash Equilibrium.- 10.7 Appendix: First-Price, Sealed-Bid Auction with a Continuum of Types.- 11. What You Do Tells Me Who You Are: Signaling Games.- 11.1 Introduction.- 11.2 Perfect Bayes–Nash Equilibrium.- 11.3 Examples.- 11.4 Selecting Among Perfect Bayes-Nash Equilibria: The Intuitive Criterion.- 11.5 Appendix: Bayes’s Rule and Updating Beliefs.- 11.6 Appendix: Formal Definition of Perfect Bayes-Nash Equilibrium for Signaling Games.- 12. Lies and the Lying Liars That Tell Them: Cheap Talk Games.- 12.1 Introduction.- 12.2 Communication in a Game-Theoretic World.- 12.3 Signaling Information.- 12.4 Signaling Intentions.- PART 5 Repeated Games.- 13. Playing Forever: Repeated Interaction with Infinitely Lived Players.- 13.1 Trench Warfare in World War I.- 13.2 Constructing a Repeated Game.- 13.3 Trench Warfare: Finite Horizon.- 13.4 Trench Warfare: Infinite Horizon.- 13.5 Some Experimental Evidence for the Repeated Prisoners’ Dilemma.- 13.6 Appendix: Present Value of a Payoff Stream.- 13.7 Appendix: Dynamic Programming.- 14. Cooperation and Reputation: Applications of Repeated Interaction with Infinitely Lived Player.- 14.1 Introduction.- 14.2 A Menu of Punishments.- 14.3 Quid-Pro-Quo.- 14.4 Reputation.- 14.5 Imperfect Monitoring and Antiballistic Missiles.- 15. Interaction in Infinitely Lived Institutions.- 15.1 Introductions.- 15.2 Cooperation with Overlapping Generations.- 15.3 Cooperation in a Large Population.- PART 6 Evolutionary Game Theory.- 16. Evolutionary Game Theory and Biology: Evolutionarily Stable Strategies.- 16.1 Introducing Evolutionary Game Theory.- 16.2 Hawk–Dove Conflict.- 16.3 Evolutionarily Stable Strategy.- 16.4 Properties of an ESS.- 16.5 Multipopulation Games.- 16.6 Evolution of Spite.- 17. Evolutionary Game Theory and Biology: Replicator Dynamics.- 17.1 Introduction.- 17.2 Replicator Dynamics and the Hawk–Dove Game.- 17.3 General Definition of the Replicator Dynamic.- 17.4 ESS and Attractors of the Replicator Dynamic.- 17.5 Examples.- Solutions to "Check Your Understanding" Questions.- Glossary.- Index.

About the Author :
Joseph E. Harrington, Jr. is Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University. He has served on numerous editorial boards, including the RAND Journal of Economics, Foundations and Trends in Microeconomics, and the Southern Economic Journal. His research has appeared in top journals in a variety of disciplines including economics (e.g., the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, and Games and Economic Behavior), political science (Economics and Politics, Public Choice), sociology (American Journal of Sociology), organizational behavior (Management Science), and psychology (Journal of Mathematical Psychology). He is a co-author of the leading textbook Economics of Regulation and Antitrust, which is currently in its fourth edition.