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Game Theory. Analysis of conflict
Eminently suited to classroom use as well as individual study, Roger Myerson's introductory text provides a clear and thorough examination of the models, solution concepts, results, and methodological principles of noncooperative and cooperative game theory. Myerson introduces, clarifies, and synthesizes the extraordinary advances made in the subject over the past fifteen years, presents an overview of decision theory, and comprehensively reviews the development of the fundamental models: games in extensive form and strategic form, and Bayesian games with incomplete information.
Game Theory will be useful for students at the graduate level in economics, political science, operations research, and applied mathematics. Everyone who uses game theory in research will find this book essential.
Game Theory will be useful for students at the graduate level in economics, political science, operations research, and applied mathematics. Everyone who uses game theory in research will find this book essential.
592 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
June 20, 2012
This is a very good graduate level textbook in game theory. It is pretty hard going in terms of notation, so recommended for self study only to the most dedicated readers. However, if you do persevere and get to master the notation (if you are not put off by first chapter, you should have no problems with the rest) Persevering with the notation has high payoffs: is one of the few textbooks with extended worked examples that really get into the nitty gritty. Highly recommended.
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November 29, 2015Before I continue with this book, I need to set things out straight, especially with what I think are the limits of game theory in describing human behaviour. Game theory concerns itself with those situations where each 'player' stands to benefit to a greater degree by applying one strategy over another, where this choice of strategy depends on the strategies chosen by others. It is often the case that each individual would stand to benefit in the long-run from cooperating (largely due to external threats). However, the idea that
Some believe that this sort of game is the basis for the evolution of cooperative mechanisms in the brain.
The mistake would be to assume that simply because the strategy can be seen to be rational, the process of conceiving or learning this strategy, as well as the eventual embodiment of it in a human mind is 'rational'.
In fact, when it comes to routine acts performed in the common good, a certain level of 'trust' arises: by that we mean belief that others will conform to 'good' behaviour despite the absence of coercive structures or closed-circuit monitoring. Instead, we learn quickly as children to judge the character of others: extrapolating from their behaviour in certain domains and their revealed attitudes towards various circumstances to form a predictive (in some instances, embodied -- empathy etc.) model of the person. I think a good illustration of this would be the people populating the subconscious world in the movie Inception, who have a life of their own rather independent of the dreamer's own 'self' (an interesting question in developmental psychology would be 'when does this seperation of self and other arise?)
People often behave strategically (just like various social animals) without ascribing such behaviour to self-interest. Rather, whether the original impulse has ossified into routine, or whether we have internalised and embodied 'the ideology of the good and the right' from the outset (often from our parents), we tend to reason, display our reasoning, and fully believe in this reasoning in the context of a 'social language': we explain ourselves retroactively, utilising metaphors borrowed from hundreds of years of human experience, encoded in the fabric of language. We borrow explanations from adults, from friends. We understand implicitly the force of social norms, are able to distance ourselves from them, yet generally abide by them. We have not imagined a world in which these norms are challenged and usurped.
(well, not so, in our age of the 'social revolution', largely perpetuated by Americans and the impressionable youth of the world. But we hardly have a model of where these new norms will bring us. Nevertheless, this age of reinventing social life is an interesting one, and it remains to be seen where the dead, nationally-oriented (and manufactured), conformist, ossified and largely non-existent culture of my country Singapore is headed. Mostly it seems confused, naïve/cynical, faltering.)
Yet, beyond avoiding the pain of embarrassment and scorn, and gaining the approval of peers, elders and juniors alike, there is a deeper level of belief, a deeper level by which we explain ourselves: in the same way we are accountable to others, we learn to be accountable to ourselves. We learn to reason through our experiences and our impressions of others and decide for ourselves who it is we want to be, what principles we want to abide by, what we fight for. Yet often we are limited, by realism: we still need food, water, shelter, we need money, security, family. This breeds a contradiction, an inconsistency between our ideals and our meagre circumstances, and often, powerless, we fall back upon our meagre circumstances and settle for less.
The central problem of politics, or human relations for that matter, isn't power, but beliefs. Political realism would work if only everyone was a political realist. Unfortunately, this is not the greatest of our problems, as the recent spade of terrorism would attest to. If only people acknowledged responsibility for the system we perpetuate! Power is never its own ends. Power, when wielded with an air of tyranny and madness, often accompanies a malformed set of beliefs about the world and where it should be heading.
On the other hand, political realism does pose another problem, one that also cannot be solved systematically. This is because while we are often nonchalant about short-term decisions, often how we judge our payoffs ultimately depend on how it connects up to our greater view of life. We are often unable to look beyond our own lives because ultimately, we die. We desire to live our own lives in the corner of the world we have claimed as our own. But what do we constitute as our 'identity'? What is the boundary of the self? Experience may be subjective, but can it encompass everything, internalise everything?
Some believe that this sort of game is the basis for the evolution of cooperative mechanisms in the brain.
The mistake would be to assume that simply because the strategy can be seen to be rational, the process of conceiving or learning this strategy, as well as the eventual embodiment of it in a human mind is 'rational'.
In fact, when it comes to routine acts performed in the common good, a certain level of 'trust' arises: by that we mean belief that others will conform to 'good' behaviour despite the absence of coercive structures or closed-circuit monitoring. Instead, we learn quickly as children to judge the character of others: extrapolating from their behaviour in certain domains and their revealed attitudes towards various circumstances to form a predictive (in some instances, embodied -- empathy etc.) model of the person. I think a good illustration of this would be the people populating the subconscious world in the movie Inception, who have a life of their own rather independent of the dreamer's own 'self' (an interesting question in developmental psychology would be 'when does this seperation of self and other arise?)
People often behave strategically (just like various social animals) without ascribing such behaviour to self-interest. Rather, whether the original impulse has ossified into routine, or whether we have internalised and embodied 'the ideology of the good and the right' from the outset (often from our parents), we tend to reason, display our reasoning, and fully believe in this reasoning in the context of a 'social language': we explain ourselves retroactively, utilising metaphors borrowed from hundreds of years of human experience, encoded in the fabric of language. We borrow explanations from adults, from friends. We understand implicitly the force of social norms, are able to distance ourselves from them, yet generally abide by them. We have not imagined a world in which these norms are challenged and usurped.
(well, not so, in our age of the 'social revolution', largely perpetuated by Americans and the impressionable youth of the world. But we hardly have a model of where these new norms will bring us. Nevertheless, this age of reinventing social life is an interesting one, and it remains to be seen where the dead, nationally-oriented (and manufactured), conformist, ossified and largely non-existent culture of my country Singapore is headed. Mostly it seems confused, naïve/cynical, faltering.)
Yet, beyond avoiding the pain of embarrassment and scorn, and gaining the approval of peers, elders and juniors alike, there is a deeper level of belief, a deeper level by which we explain ourselves: in the same way we are accountable to others, we learn to be accountable to ourselves. We learn to reason through our experiences and our impressions of others and decide for ourselves who it is we want to be, what principles we want to abide by, what we fight for. Yet often we are limited, by realism: we still need food, water, shelter, we need money, security, family. This breeds a contradiction, an inconsistency between our ideals and our meagre circumstances, and often, powerless, we fall back upon our meagre circumstances and settle for less.
The central problem of politics, or human relations for that matter, isn't power, but beliefs. Political realism would work if only everyone was a political realist. Unfortunately, this is not the greatest of our problems, as the recent spade of terrorism would attest to. If only people acknowledged responsibility for the system we perpetuate! Power is never its own ends. Power, when wielded with an air of tyranny and madness, often accompanies a malformed set of beliefs about the world and where it should be heading.
On the other hand, political realism does pose another problem, one that also cannot be solved systematically. This is because while we are often nonchalant about short-term decisions, often how we judge our payoffs ultimately depend on how it connects up to our greater view of life. We are often unable to look beyond our own lives because ultimately, we die. We desire to live our own lives in the corner of the world we have claimed as our own. But what do we constitute as our 'identity'? What is the boundary of the self? Experience may be subjective, but can it encompass everything, internalise everything?
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July 4, 2012read???
November 13, 2022
A good refresher for advanced (albeit rusty) readers. For less-advanced readers, a challenging self-taught book, but should be worth the effort.
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December 8, 2016Excellent! I approached this with fear and trembling but was delighted to discover that the author wrote clearly and at a level which I could understand.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews