耶鲁大学公开课博弈论原版资料.doc

Syllabus
by (course_default) — last modified 10-14-2008 04:00 PM
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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.
ECON 159: Game Theory (Fall, 2007)
Syllabus
Professor:
Ben Polak, Professor of Economics and Management, Yale University
Description:
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.
Texts:
A. Dixit and B. Nalebuff. Thinking Strategically, Norton 1991
J. Watson. Strategy: An Introduction to Game Theory, Norton 2002
P.K. Dutta. Strategies and Games: Theory And Practice, MIT 1999
Requirements:
Who should take this course?
This course is an introduction to game theory. Introductory microeconomics (115 or equivalent) is required. Intermediate micro (150/2) is not required, but it is recommended. We will use calculus (mostly one variable) in this course. We will also refer to ideas like probability and expectation. Some may prefer to take the course next academic year once they have more background. Students who have already taken Econ 156b should not enroll in this class.
Course Aims and Methods.
Game theory is a way of thinking about strategic situations. One aim of the course is to teach you some strategic considerations to take into account making your choices. A second aim is to predict how other people or organizations behave when they are in strategic settings. We will see that these aims are closely related. We will learn new concepts, methods and terminology. A third aim is to apply these tools to settings from economics and from elsewhere. The course will emphasize examples. We will also play several games in class.
Outline and Reading.
Most of the reading for this course comes from the first ten chapters of Dutta or from the first two parts of Watson. There will be a reading packet for weeks 6-7. The readings are not compulsory, but they will help back up the class material.
Grading:
Problem sets: 30%
Midterm examination: 30%
Final examination: 40%

Transcript 1 - Introduction: five first lessons
by mvd4 — last modified 09-15-2011 09:34 AM
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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 game is a prisoners' dilemma. We learn that we should never choose a dominated strategy; but that rational play by rational players can lead to bad outcomes. We discuss some prisoners' dilemmas in the real world and some possible real-world remedies. With other plausible payoffs, our game is a coordination problem and has very different outcomes: so different payoffs matter. We often need to think, not only about our own payoffs, but also others' payoffs. We should put ourselves in others' shoes and try to predict what they will do. This is the essence of strategic thinking.
Game Theory: Lecture 1 Transcript
September 5, 2007
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Chapter 1. What Is Strategy? [00:00:00]
Professor Ben Polak: So this is Game Theory Economics 159. If you're here for art history, you're either in the wrong room or stay anyway, maybe this is the right room; but this is Game Theory, okay. You should have four handouts; everyone should have four handouts. There is a legal release form--we'll talk about it in a minute--about the videoing. There is a syllabus, which is a preliminary syllabus: it's also online. And there are two games labeled Game 1 and Game 2. Can I get you all to look at Game 1 and start thinking about it. And while you're thinking about it, I am hoping you can multitask a bit. I'll describe a bit about the class and we'll get a bit of admin under our belts. But please try and look at--somebody's not looking at it, because they're using it as a fan here--so look at Game 1 and fill out that form for me, okay?
So while you're filling that out, let me tell you a little bit about what we're going to be doing here. So what is Game Theory? Game Theory is a method of studying strategic situations. So what's a strategic situation? Well let's start off with what's not a strategic situation. In your Economics - in your Intro Economics class in 115 or 110, you saw some pretty good examples of situations that were not strategic. You saw firms working in perfect competition. Firms in perfect competition are price takers: they don't particularly have to worry about the actions of their competitors. You also saw firms that were monopolists and monopolists don't have any competitors to worry about, so that's not a particularly strategic situation. They're not price takers but they take the demand curve. Is this looking familiar for some of you who can remember doing 115 last year or maybe two years ago for some of you? Everything in between is strategic. So everything that constitutes imperfect competition is a strategic setting. Think about the motor industry, the motor car industry. Ford has to worry about what GM is doing and what Toyota is doing, and for the moment at least what Chrysler is doing but perhaps not for long. So there's a small number of firms and their actions affect each other.
So for a literal definition of what strategic means: it's a setting where the outcomes that affect you depend on actions, not just on your own actions, but on actions of others. All right, that's as much as I'm going to say for preview right now, we're going to come back and see plenty of this over the course of the next semester.
Chapter 2. Strategy: Where Does It Apply? [00:02:16]
So what I want to do is get on to where this applies. It obviously applies in Economics, but it also applies in politics, and in fact, this class will count as a Political Science class if you're a Political Science major. You should go check with the DUS in Political Science. It count - Game Theory is very important in law these days. So for those of you--for the half of you--that are going to end up in law school, this is pretty good training. Game Theory is also used in biology and towards the middle of the semester we're actually going to see some examples of Game Theory as applied to evolution. And not surprisingly, Game Theory applies to sport.
Chapter 3. (Administrative Issues) [00:02:54]
So let's talk about a bit of admin. How are you doing on filling out those games? Everyone managing to multitask: filling in Game 1? Keep writing. I want to get some admin out of the way and I want to start by getting out of the way what is obviously the elephant in the room. Some of you will have noticed that there's a camera crew here, okay. So as some of you probably know, Yale is undergoing an open education project and they're videoing several classes, and the idea of this, is to make educational materials available beyond the walls of Yale. In fact, on the web, internationally, so people in places, maybe places in the U.S. or places miles away, maybe in Timbuktu or whatever, who find it difficult to get educational materials from the local university or whatever, can watch certain lectures from Yale on the web.
Some of you would have been in classes that do that before. What's going to different about this class is that you're going to be participating in it. The way we teach this class is we're going to play games, we're going to have discussions, we're going to talk among the class, and you're going to be learning from each other, and I want you to help people watching at home to be able to learn too. And that means you're going to be on film, at the very least on mike.
So how's that going to work? Around the room are three T.A.s holding mikes. Let me show you where they are: one here, one here, and one here. When I ask for classroom discussions, I'm going to have one of the T.A.s go to you with a microphone much like in "Donahue" or something, okay. At certain times, you're going to be seen on film, so the camera is actually going to come around and point in your direction.
Now I really want this to happen. I had to argue for this to happen, cause I really feel that this class isn't about me. I'm part of the class obviously, but it's about you teaching each other and participating. But there's a catch, the catch is, that that means you have to sign that legal release form.
So you'll see that you have in front of you a legal release form, you have to be able to sign it, and what that says is that we can use you being shown in class. Think of this as a bad hair day release form. All right, you can't sue Yale later if you had a bad hair day. For those of you who are on the run from the FBI, your Visa has run out or you're sitting next to your ex-girlfriend, now would be a good time to put a paper bag over your head.
All right, now just to get you used to the idea, in every class we're going to have I think the same two people, so Jude is the cameraman; why don't you all wave to Jude: this is Jude okay. And Wes is our audio guy: this is Wes. And I will try and remember not to include Jude and Wes in the classroom discussions, but you should be aware that they're there. Now, if this is making you nervous, if it's any consolation, it's making me very nervous.
So, all right, we'll try and make this class work as smoothly as we can, allowing for this extra thing. Let me just say, no one's making any money off this--at least I'm hoping these guys are being paid--but me and the T.A.s are not being paid. The aim of this, that I think is a good aim, it's an educational project, and I'm hoping you'll help us with it. The one difference it is going to mean, is that at times I might hold some of the discussions for the class, coming down into this part of the room, here, to make it a little easier for Jude.
All right, how are we doing now on filling out those forms? Has everyone filled in their strategy for the first game? Not yet. Okay, let's go on doing a bit more admin. The thing you mostly care about I'm guessing, is the grades. All right, so how is the grade going to work for this class? 30% of the class will be on problem sets, 30% of the grade; 30% on the mid-term, and 40% on the final; so 30/30/40.
The mid-term will be held in class on October 17th; that is also in your syllabus. Please don't anybody tell me late - any time after today you didn't know when the mid-term was and therefore it clashes with 17 different things. The mid-term is on October 17th, which is a Wednesday, in class. All right, the problem sets: there will be roughly ten problem sets and I'll talk about them more later on when I hand them out. The first one will go out on Monday but it will be due ten days later. Roughly speaking they'll be every week.
The grade distribution: all right, so this is the rough grade distribution. Roughly speaking, a sixth of the class are going to end up with A's, a sixth are going to end up with A-, a sixth are going to end up with B+, a sixth are going to end up with B, a sixth are going to end up with B-, and the remaining sixth, if I added that up right, are going to end up with what I guess we're now calling the presidential grade, is that right?
That's not literally true. I'm going to squeeze it a bit, I'm going to curve it a bit, so actually slightly fewer than a sixth will get straight A's, and fewer than a sixth will get C's and below. We'll squeeze the middle to make them be more B's. One thing I can guarantee from past experience in this class, is that the median grade will be a B+. The median will fall somewhere in the B+'s. Just as forewarning for people who have forgotten what a median is, that means half of you--not approximately half, it means exactly half of you--will be getting something like B+ and below and half will get something like B+ and above.
Now, how are you doing in filling in the forms? Everyone filled them in yet? Surely must be pretty close to getting everyone filled in. All right, so last things to talk about before I actually collect them in - textbooks. There are textbooks for this class. The main textbook is this one, Dutta's book Strategy and Games. If you want a slightly tougher book, more rigorous book, try Joel Watson's book, Strategies. Both of those books are available at the bookstore.
But I want to warn everybody ahead of time, I will not be following the textbook. I regard these books as safety nets. If you don't understand something that happened in class, you want to reinforce an idea that came up in class, then you should read the relevant chapters in the book and the syllabus will tell you which chapters to read for each class, or for each week of class, all right. But I will not be following these books religiously at all. In fact, they're just there as back up.
In addition, I strongly recommend people read, Thinking Strategically. This is good bedtime reading. Do any of you suffer from insomnia? It's very good bedtime reading if you suffer from insomnia. It's a good book and what's more there's going to be a new edition of this book this year and Norton have allowed us to get advance copies of it. So if you don't buy this book this week, I may be able to make the advance copy of the new edition available for some of you next week. I'm not taking a cut on that either, all right, there's no money changing hands.
All right, sections are on the syllabus sign up - sorry on the website, sign up as usual. Put yourself down on the wait list if you don't get into the section you want. You probably will get into the section you want once we're done.
Chapter 4. Elements of a Game: Strategies, Actions, Outcomes and Payoffs [00:09:40]
All right, now we must be done with the forms. Are we done with the forms? All right, so why don't we send the T.A.s, with or without mikes, up and down the aisles and collect in your Game #1; not Game #2, just Game #1.
Just while we're doing that, I think the reputation of this class--I think--if you look at the course evaluations online or whatever, is that this class is reasonably hard but reasonably fun. So I'm hoping that's what the reputation of the class is. If you think this class is going to be easy, I think it isn't actually an easy class. It's actually quite a hard class, but I think I can guarantee it's going to be a fun class. Now one reason it's a fun class, is the nice thing about teaching Game T