Games and Decision Making

Description

Games and Decision Making, Second Edition, is a unique blend of decision theory and game theory. From classical optimization to modern game theory, authors Charalambos D. Aliprantis and Subir K. Chakrabarti show the importance of mathematical knowledge in understanding and analyzing issues in decision making. Through an imaginative selection of topics, Aliprantis and Chakrabarti treat decision and game theory as part of one body of knowledge. They move from problems involving the individual decision-maker to progressively more complex problems such as sequential rationality, auctions, and bargaining. By building each chapter on material presented earlier, the authors offer a self-contained and comprehensive treatment of these topics.

• Indicate the clarity and the rigor with which the concepts are presented.
• The second edition now has a much more comprehensive coverage of the main concepts of game theory.
• The book has numerous carefully chosen and fully worked out set of applications from economics and other disciplines that illustrate the theory.

About the Author(s)

Charalambos D. Aliprantis and Subir K. Chakrabarti

The late Charalambos D. Aliprantis was distinguished Professor at the Krannert School of Management at Purdue University. During a career that spanned almost forty years, he published more than one hundred articles in the major journals in economic theory and mathematics and authored half a dozen books on economic theory and mathematics. Subir K. Chakrabarti is Professor in the Department of Economics at Indiana University and Purdue University at Indianapolis. He has written more than twenty publications, with articles in journals such as Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Mathematical Economics, International Economic Review, and Journal of Public Economics.

Table of Contents

Preface
Chapter 1. Choices
1.1. Functions
1.2. The optimization problem
1.3. First- and second-order conditions
1.4. Optimizing using the Lagrange method
1.5. Uncertainty and chance
1.6. Decision making under uncertainty
Chapter 2. Decisions and Games
2.1. Two-person matrix games
2.2. Strategic games
2.3. Dominant and dominated strategies
2.4. Solving matrix games with mixed strategies
2.5. Examples of two-person games
2.6. Best responses and Nash equilibria
2.7. Games with incomplete information
2.8. Applications
Chapter 3. Sequential Decisions
3.1. Graphs and trees
3.2. Single-person sequential decisions
3.3. Uncertainty and single-person decisions
Chapter 4. Sequential Games
4.1. The structure of sequential games
4.2. Equilibria in sequential games
4.3. Applications of sequential games
4.4. Solving sequential games with behavior strategies
Chapter 5. Auctions
5.1. Auctions with complete information
5.2. English auctions
5.3. Individual private-value auctions
5.4. Common-value auctions
5.5. Revenue equivalence
Chapter 6. Bargaining
6.1. The Nash solution
6.2. Monotonicity in bargaining
6.3. The core of a bargaining game
6.4. An allocation rule: the Shapley value
6.5. Two-person sequential bargaining
Chapter 7. Repeated Games
7.1. The structure and equilibria of repeated games
7.2. Subgame perfection in finite-horizon repeated games
7.3. Infinite-horizon repeated games
7.4. The Folk theorem and subgame perfect equilibrium
7.5. Applications of repeated and sequential games
Chapter 8. Sequential Rationality
8.1. The market for lemons
8.2. Beliefs and strategies
8.3. Consistency of beliefs
8.4. Expected payoff
8.5. Sequential equilibrium
8.6. Perfect Bayesian equilibrium
8.7. Signaling games
8.8. Applications
Chapter 9. Existence of Equilibria
9.1. Some Mathematical Preliminaries
9.2. Zero-sum games
9.3. Existence of equilibrium in strategic form games
9.4. Existence of equilibrium in sequential games
9.5. Existence of sequential equilibrium
Bibliography