Book Description
This book introduces one of the most powerful tools of modern economics to a wide audience: those who will later construct or consume game-theoretic models. Robert Gibbons addresses scholars in applied fields within economics who want a serious and thorough discussion of game theory but who may have found other works overly abstract. Gibbons emphasizes the economic applications of the theory at least as much as the pure theory itself; formal arguments about abstract games play a minor role. The applications illustrate the process of model building--of translating an informal description of a multi-person decision situation into a formal game-theoretic problem to be analyzed. Also, the variety of applications shows that similar issues arise in different areas of economics, and that the same game-theoretic tools can be applied in each setting. In order to emphasize the broad potential scope of the theory, conventional applications from industrial organization have been largely replaced by applications from labor, macro, and other applied fields in economics. The book covers four classes of games, and four corresponding notions of equilibrium: static games of complete information and Nash equilibrium, dynamic games of complete information and subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium, static games of incomplete information and Bayesian Nash equilibrium, and dynamic games of incomplete information and perfect Bayesian equilibrium.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent!.......2007-03-13
I had heard of game theory but had never been exposed to what it actually was or how games were viewed, setup or resolved. This book was part of a PhD Micro course and I found it very readable. We actually used two books, this one and the game theory section of MasColeel. The Mas book is very encyclopedic to me and dense reading. Gibbons' book gives the concepts and applictions in a straight-forward readable manner. Highly recommended, especially if you are new or somewhat new to game theory.
Great book for serious students!.......2006-11-07
Many readers have commented on how technical this book is. I agree, but keep in mind, this book was written for students who aim to become economists, and a certain degree of technical difficulty is imperative. I confess that I struggled through the book, and I often came upon huge obstacles. But none of the difficulties that I faced were due to the book itself, all of the struggles were due to my own limited ability. But I guarantee, once you get through this book, you will be able to "use" game theory, and probably even incorporate it in your next research project!
This book was written for those who wish to use game theory in their next research paper, and it does an excellent job of it. If you are only searching for a book to understand game theory, then this book is not for you. But if you want to "use" game theory, then look no further!
good text book, but takes time and lots of thinking.......2006-07-10
This is the kind of book that cannot be scanned through, but needs to be read word by word. Some steps are not fully described and thus readers need to put in some thoughts in the game process. It presents some very interesting ideas and teaches a good range of game-solving methods.
Very good.......2006-06-25
This is a very good textbook for scholars who are instereted in applying game theory into the modelling of practical problems. It is quite application oriented.
excellent introduction (it's worth the money!).......2006-04-25
I've used this book both as a textbook and as a reference in three game theory courses, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. It doesn't cover some critical applications to contract theory, but other than that it's absolutely thorough and clear.
I don't know if it would be all that fun for someone just looking to dabble in game theory without any academic interests. I can recommend Strategy by Joel Watson for those folks - much more intuitive and has lots of examples. But if you're academically interested in game theory at all, you have to get this book. It's a great reference, and absolutely worth the money (I can't usually say that about my textbooks!).
Book Description
This volume presents mathematical formulas and theorems commonly used in economics. It includes both formulas like Roy`s identity that are peculiar to economics and formulas like Leibniz's rule that are common to many areas of applied mathematics. The volume is meant to be a reference work, to be used by students in conjunction with a textbook and by researchers in need of exact statements of mathematical results. The volume is the first grouping of this material for a specifically economist audience.
Customer Reviews:
All the formulae an economist needs.......2007-03-01
Economists' Mathematical Manual is a very good book. It gives in a very concise and clear way all an economist needs as far as maths and statistics are concerned. I would recommend the purchase!
Helpful but not complete.......2006-09-27
This book is very helpful for any economist, especially for students. It includes many formulas that are common in economics. I used the book a lot during my first-year phd course and it was very helpful because it is pretty compact. However, be careful as there are some minor errors in the book. Second, I cannot recommend it if you are interested mainly in econometric theory. You will find the basic distributions and a couple of other formulas, however there are still too few formulas about GMM or Filters etc. All in all I would recommend you the book.
Excellent reference and then some.........2002-10-25
This book is great. It provides an outstanding reference tool for graduate, but also undergraduate students. Even if you're not entirely into studying economics, and only come up against it occasionally, you can get your money's worth with this title. I purchased this as a reference while finishing undergraduate work and I'm sure it will serve me well in graduate school as well. Don't miss this, and buy a copy while it's available.
Extremely Condensed and Extremely Useful!.......2001-01-19
Sydsaeter et al. have compiled what must be the most condensed reference book in the field, given its amazingly broad scope but small number of pages. Just a few of the multitude of topics covered in this book are set theory, dynamic optimization, vector spaces, convexity, determinants, risk aversion theory, and probability distributions. The presentational format is essentially that of an extensive list, with copious notes in the margins.
The brevity of Economists' Mathematical Manual is simultaneously its greatest strength and its greatest weakness. The strength obviously lies in its diverse scope. Few books could claim to be authoritative over such a wide spectrum of subfields of economics.
Yet the lack of exposition can also be perceived as a weakness. This book is extremely useful as a reference, but first-year Ph.D. students should be warned that it should be considered supplemental only. A textbook such as Simon and Blume's Mathematics for Economists or Chiang's Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics should be the reference of first recourse for anyone encountering mathematical economics for the first time.
handy little book.......2000-10-14
I got this little book when I was in college studying economics and kept it throughout grad school in econ. It's been surprisingly useful, mostly because it contains formulas and no extraneous text. A pocket version would be even better.
Average customer rating:
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Mathematical Formulas for Economists
Bernd Luderer ,
Volker Nollau , and
Klaus Vetters
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Economists' Mathematical Manual
ASIN: 3540279164 |
Book Description
The present collection of formulas has been composed for students of economics or management science at universities, colleges and trade schools. It contains basic knowledge in mathematics, financial mathematics and statistics in a compact and clearly arranged form. This volume is meant to be a reference work to be used by students of undergraduate courses together with a textbook and by researchers in need of exact statements of mathematical results. People dealing with practical or applied problems will also find this collection to be an efficient and easy-to-use work of reference.
Average customer rating:
- Best intro book for game theory
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Game Theory for Economists
Jurgen Eichberger
Manufacturer: Academic Press
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Competitive Equilibrium: Theory and Applications
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Special Interest Politics
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Political Economy in Macroeconomics
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A Course in Game Theory
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Games for Business and Economics
ASIN: 0122336208 |
Book Description
Game Theory for Economists introduces economists to the game-theoretic approach of modelling economic behaviour and interaction, focusing on concepts and ideas from the vast field of game-theoretic models which find commonly used applications in economics.
This careful selection of topics allows the reader to concentrate on the parts of the game which are the most relevant for the economist who does not want to become a specialist. Written at a level appropriate for a student or researcher with a solid microeconomic background, the book should provide the reader with skills necessary to formalize economic games and to make them accessible for game theoretic analysis.
*
* Is a concise introduction to game theory which provides economists with the techniques and results necessary to follow the literature in economic theory.
* Helps the reader formalize economic problems.
* Concentrates on equilibrium concepts that are most commonly used in economics.
Customer Reviews:
Best intro book for game theory.......2006-11-05
I have read Martin Osborne and Gibbons' books as well as this book. I think this books is much clearer, understandable and easy to read. Lots of clear examples make the topic easier to understand. Osborne also has lots of examples but his language is not good. Being a native English speaker doesn't necessarly mean that you can write a good book even if you are one of the masters of the topic.
I recommend you to read this book before Fudenberg&Tirole and Osborne&Rubinstein's books which are the best books on game theory.
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Game Theory: Lectures for Economists and Systems Scientists (Stochastic Modelling and Applied Probability)
Nikolai N. Vorob'ev
Manufacturer: Springer
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ASIN: 0387902384 |
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Modeling Rational Agents: From Interwar Economics to Early Modern Game Theory
Nicola Giocoli
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ASIN: 1840648686 |
Book Description
This book explores the evolution, through the first half of the 20th century, of the key neoclassical concept of rationality. The analysis begins with the development of modern decision theory, covers the interwar debates over the role of perfect foresight and analyzes the first game-theoretic solution concepts of von Neumann and Nash.
The author's proposition is that the notion of rationality suffered a profound transformation that reduced it to a formal property of consistency. Such a transformation paralleled that of neoclassical economics as a whole from a discipline dealing with real economic processes to one investigating issues of logical consistency between mathematical relationships.
Modeling Rational Agents will be of great interest to scholars of the history of economic thought and method, as well as all those working in the field of game and decision theory.
Customer Reviews:
Instructive Review.......2004-09-13
There are several ways to write the history of thought. Giocoli's is a classic ways: describe the subtle transformation of a single concept across time. This is an important endeavor because the individuals involved in the transformation rarely appreciate that the process is occurring, or if they do, they consider the reconceptualization to be a part of the accumulation of knowledge, rather than a shift in what is being explained.
Giocoli's book is a subclass of the "transformation of ideas" approach which adds a critical dimension, claiming that the earlier concept has a richer value than the later, and the supposed scientific advance was at best, purchased by a certain trivialization of the subject, and at worst, no advance at all.
In this case the concept is that of the rational actor. Giocoli sums up his views very early: "We started from the classic notion of a rational agent [who is] a relentless maximizer who aimed at pursuing his/her own goals and desires, and ended with the shrinking of rationality to a formal requirement of consistency, where the notion of agency itself was so stripped down of its human peculiarities as to become an all-purpose concept valid for real individuals as well as for groups or machines." (p. 3)
How could economists have accepted such a move from substance to formalism? Giocolo argues that the transformation of the rational actor was part of a more general movement in neoclassical economics from a substantive system of forces (SOF) approach to a formalistic system of relations (SOR) approach. In
an SOF approach, one attempts to explain real actors as substantive rational actors striving to maximize, whereas in an SOR approach, one attempts to idealize the actor and explain the idealization.
Unlike Giocoli, I very much admire the economic theory that he critiques, although I certainly agree with him that one of its effects is that a good deal of economic theory suffers from a ludicrous "mathematics envy" that would be amusing if it were not such a tragic waste of talent. Indeed, many mathematical economists pride themselves on their ignorance of real economies, and pursue their irrelevant studies with an absurdly inflated self-importance. For instance, von Neumann-Morgenstern-type game theory, with its stable sets, Shapley values and the like, continue to be the object of intensive investigation, despite the fact that the cooperative game theory model has never shown itself to be in the least useful. Simillarly, theorists give each other kudos for proving that a result that holds for a finite number consumers continues to hold with a continuum of consumers. But, in fact, there are only a finite number of consumers, so there is no reason to generalize to the continuous case! Of course, if you cannot prove something
in the finite case but you can in the continuous case, that is a different story. The continuous case may be a simplifying assumption, but it often gives rise to powerfully predictive models.
Each of the theories Giocoli criticizes has been the basis for a staggering variety of empirical findings that are now being used to revise the formalist theory in such a way as to become, once again, substantive. Consider, for instance, decision theory. This became formalist in the hands of Savage, Samuelson, and others, who showed that one could retrieve the maximization
subject to constraints model from a few simple axiomatic consistency assumptions. The resulting model, however, became the key element in the experimental methodology of choice theory in psychology. In the expert hands of Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman and others, this "formalist" decision theory, with its stripped-down concept of rationality, yielded a surfeit of
psychological generalizations that were quite unavailable prior to the "formalist revolution" in decision theory.
Giocoli's treatment of game theory suffers from an excessive attempt to fit things nicely into his overall theory. He praises the cooperative game theory of von Neumann and Morgenstern as being part of the system of forces (SOF) approach which is being abandoned by economists, even though nothing has ever come of the theory in terms of successful models of real social processes, and the main result of their work was the axiomatization of choice under uncertainty (expected utility), which was the underpinning of the formalization of the rationality concept. Giocoli tries to explain why the Nash equilibrium concept was ignored during the 1950's and 1960's, and did not come into its own until the 1980's and later, by saying that Nash's concept of equilibrium is "formalist" and could not be embraced until neoclassical economics itself had become "formalist." I do not accept this explanation at
all.
The period from 1950 to 1970 was one in which economic theory was preoccupied with relatively narrow issues concerning economic stabilization (fiscal and monetary policy), the market/state mix (public economics), and development economics, itself stressing physical and human capital formation and
technical change. Game theory has relatively little to say about these subjects. By the mid-1970's, by contrast, economists were fully involved in dealing with such social areas as crime, poverty, substance abuse, gender roles, corruption, the family, and other areas in which game theory excels. The work of Nobel prize winner Gary Becker exemplifies these new concerns,
but many economists have been involved. Noncooperative game theory, and the Nash equilibrium as its organizing concept, have been central to understanding these areas, and game theory has accordingly been admitted to the center of contemporary neoclassical economics.
Nevertheless, Giocoli is correct in saying that the Nash equilibrium concept is "formalist." I say this because the Nash criterion calls something an equilibrium when no single agent can gain by moving from it, whereas in the real world, multiple agents can move at the same time, and even in concert. Of course, such coordinated movement is at the heart of equilibrium notions in cooperative game theory, which may well be why von Neumann rejected Nash's work. It is telling that when the animal behaviorist John Maynard Smith appropriated game theory in the period 1972-1982, he saw fit to correct this weakness in the Nash criterion, developing the notion of an "evolutionarily
stable strategy," which is anything but formalist. The value of evolutionary game theory in biology has been of the highest order, effectively revolutionizing animal behavior theory in the three decades since Maynard Smith and Price wrote their first article on the subject.
Giocoli reveals the weakness of his approach in his treatment of evolutionary game theory. I will not go through the details of his argument, which is quite shabby. The weakness of his approach is simple: when he sees economic theory developing in an incorrect manner, he writes a critique. This is fine for dealing with the past, but when operating in the present, one must look around and see if there are researchers aware of and attempting to develop a better theory. For instance, he does not mention my review of attempts to correct economic formalism in my book Game Theory Evolving (Princeton University Press, 2000), even though this predates his book by three years. Much more surprising is the lack of mention of the contributions of Kahneman and his coworkers. One might infer that Giocoli is as unconcerned with empirical reality as those that he criticizes.
His failure to look for contemporary developments led Giocoli to
underappreciate the salutary effect of "formalist" decision theory and game theory on empirical work and hence on the repair of formalism. All of the competitors of the neoclassical tradition he criticizes have fallen by the wayside, and the neoclassical tradition has been only fortified and strengthened by its critics. Giocoli's critique clearly applies to much overbearing super-formalism in contemporary neoclassical theory, and this book's message will appeal to those opposed to analytical model-building altogether. But, until a better alternative comes along, I will continue to defend evolutionary game theory and other attempts to contribute to the analytical modeling of human behavior.
.
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Money and Financial Institutions - A Game Theoretic Approach: The Selected (Economists of the Twentieth Century series)
Martin Shubik
Manufacturer: Edward Elgar Publishing
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ASIN: 1840641908 |
Book Description
This book presents Martin Shubik's important contribution to the development of game theory, and shows how game theory methods can be used in the study of prices, money and financial institutions.
After introducing the reader to his career and the influences which developed his research, Professor Martin Shubik addresses the price system considering issues such as competitive equilibrium, economic exchange and production. He explores the competitive price system and the emergence of money and financial systems to develop a theory of monetary and financial institutions. Specifically, he examines the role of money in the economy using both cooperative and non-cooperative solutions in game theory. Throughout the book Martin Shubik stresses that the value of games, which can be both played and analyzed, provides an important link between theory and process and institutional studies.
This book will be welcomed by economists, especially those interested in game theory, as well as by money and banking professionals.
Book Description
This book presents the most important published articles of Martin Shubik who has made a path-breaking contribution to game theory and political economy. The volume shows how game theory can be used to explore fundamental problems in economics, political science and operations research.
The book opens with an introduction to the career of Martin Shubik and the influences which have shaped his research. In this, and the chapters which follow, Martin Shubik stresses the importance of formulative models as playable games and the treatment of information to describe decision making among individuals, using examples from industrial organization. He demonstrates that games are a fruitful way to extend our knowledge of competition among the few. In addition, he considers the importance of gaming in economics and business suggesting that experimental games can be used to illustrate problems and principles in multi-person decision making.
This book will be welcomed by economists, game theorists, political scientists, and operations researchers.
Book Description
This digital document is an article from American Economist, published by Omicron Delta Epsilon on September 22, 2002. The length of the article is 7879 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Using Greek mythology to teach game theory.
Author: James D. Miller
Publication:
American Economist (Refereed)
Date: September 22, 2002
Publisher: Omicron Delta Epsilon
Volume: 46
Issue: 2
Page: 69(11)
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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