Exploring Game Theory
How could you begin to model keyword auctions, and peer-to-peer file-sharing networks, exploring game theory without accounting for the incentives of the people using them?
About this Course
Popularized by movies such as “A Beautiful Mind,” game theory is the mathematical modeling of strategic interaction among rational (and irrational) agents. Beyond what we call `games’ in common language, such as chess, poker, soccer, etc.,
Exploring game theory includes the modeling of conflict among nations, political campaigns, competition among firms, and trading behavior in markets such as the NYSE. The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more.
Skills You Will Gain
- Game Theory
- Backward Induction
- Bayesian Game
- Problem Solving
Syllabus – What you will learn from this course
WEEK 1: 3 hours to complete
- Week 1: Introduction and Overview
Introduction, overview, exploring game theory, uses of game theory, some applications, and examples, and formal definitions of the normal form, payoffs, strategies, pure strategy Nash equilibrium, dominant strategies
11 videos (Total 80 min), 2 readings, 2 quizzes
WEEK 2: 2 hours to complete
- Week 2: Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium
Understand pure and mixed strategy Nash equilibria in exploring game theory
7 videos (Total 76 min)
WEEK 3: 2 hours to complete
- Week 3: Alternate Solution Concepts
Iterative removal of strictly dominated strategies, minimax strategies and the minimax theorem for a zero-sum game, correlated equilibria
6 videos (Total 64 min)
WEEK 4: 3 hours to complete
- Week 4: Extensive-Form Games
Perfect information games: trees, players assigned to nodes, payoffs, backward Induction, subgame perfect equilibrium, introduction to imperfect-information games, mixed versus behavioral strategies.
10 videos (Total 101 min)
WEEK 5: 3 hours to complete
- Week 5: Repeated Games
Repeated prisoners dilemma, finite and infinite repeated games, limited-average versus future-discounted reward, folk theorems, stochastic games and learning.
7 videos (Total 87 min)
WEEK 6: 2 hours to complete
- Week 6: Bayesian Games
General definitions, ex ante/interim Bayesian Nash equilibrium.
6 videos (Total 53 min)
WEEK 7: 2 hours to complete
- Week 7: Coalitional Games
Transferable utility cooperative games, Shapley value, Core, applications.
5 videos (Total 52 min)
WEEK 8: 1 hour to complete
- Week 8: Final Exam on exploring game theory
Originally posted 2022-01-16 15:13:41.
