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Education

Game Theory

by Ben Polak
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Latest episodes

  • 12 – Evolutionary Stability: Social Convention, Aggression, and Cycles

    October 15, 2007 · 1 hr 6 min

    We apply the idea of evolutionary stability to consider the evolution of social conventions. Then we consider games that involve aggressive (Hawk) and passive (Dove) strategies, finding that sometimes, evolutionary populations are mixed…

  • 11 – Evolutionary Stability: Cooperation, Mutation, and Equilibrium

    October 10, 2007 · 1 hr 12 min

    We discuss evolution and game theory, and introduce the concept of evolutionary stability. We ask what kinds of strategies are evolutionarily stable, and how this idea from biology relates to concepts from economics like domination and…

  • 10 – Mixed Strategies in Baseball, Dating and Paying Your Taxes

    October 8, 2007 · 1 hr 14 min

    We develop three different interpretations of mixed strategies in various contexts: sport, anti-terrorism strategy, dating, paying taxes and auditing taxpayers. One interpretation is that people literally randomize over their choices…

  • 9 – Mixed Strategies in Theory and Tennis

    October 3, 2007 · 1 hr 13 min

    We continue our discussion of mixed strategies. First we discuss the payoff to a mixed strategy, pointing out that it must be a weighed average of the payoffs to the pure strategies used in the mix. We note a consequence of this: if a…

  • 8 – Nash Equilibrium: Location, Segregation and Randomization

    October 1, 2007 · 1 hr 14 min

    We first complete our discussion of the candidate-voter model showing, in particular, that, in equilibrium, two candidates cannot be too far apart. Then we play and analyze Schelling’s location game. We discuss how segregation can occur in…

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  • 7 – Nash Equilibrium: Shopping, Standing and Voting on a Line

    September 26, 2007 · 1 hr 11 min

    We first consider the alternative “Bertrand” model of imperfect competition between two firms in which the firms set prices rather than setting quantities. Then we consider a richer model in which firms still set prices but in which the…

  • 6 – Nash Equilibrium: Dating and Cournot

    September 24, 2007 · 1 hr 12 min

    We apply the notion of Nash Equilibrium, first, to some more coordination games; in particular, the Battle of the Sexes. Then we analyze the classic Cournot model of imperfect competition between firms. We consider the difficulties in…

  • 5 – Nash Equilibrium: Bad Fashion and Bank Runs

    September 19, 2007 · 1 hr 9 min

    We first define formally the new concept from last time: Nash equilibrium. Then we discuss why we might be interested in Nash equilibrium and how we might find Nash equilibrium in various games. As an example, we play a class investment…

  • 4 – Best Responses in Soccer and Business Partnerships

    September 17, 2007 · 1 hr 12 min

    We continue the idea (from last time) of playing a best response to what we believe others will do. More particularly, we develop the idea that you should not play a strategy that is not a best response for any belief about others’…

  • 3 – Iterative Deletion and the Median-Voter Theorem

    September 12, 2007 · 1 hr 1 min

    We apply the main idea from last time, iterative deletion of dominated strategies, to analyze an election where candidates can choose their policy positions. We then consider how good is this classic model as a description of the real…

  • 2 – Putting Yourselves into Other People’s Shoes

    September 10, 2007 · 1 hr 9 min

    At the start of the lecture, we introduce the “formal ingredients” of a game: the players, their strategies and their payoffs. Then we return to the main lessons from last time: not playing a dominated strategy; and putting ourselves into…

  • 1 – Introduction: Five First Lessons

    September 5, 2007 · 1 hr 9 min

    We introduce Game Theory by playing a game. We organize the game into players, their strategies, and their goals or payoffs; and we learn that we should decide what our goals are before we make choices. With some plausible payoffs, our…

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About the show

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. This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 75 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Fall 2007.