300237 Gametheory. Some classical and more recent contributions and papers mainly relating to problems of trust and communication (S) (SoSe 2017)

Game Theory: Some Papers and Perspectives from an Expanding Area of Research

Game theory focuses on modeling interactive decision making, i.e. situations where we care about the impressions we make on others, as their behavior will possibly affect us and what particular behavior they choose will depend on what we have done in the past and what they in turn expect us to do in the future. Such considerations amount to what some have called strategic rationality, a theme of whose intricacies readers of e.g. Goffman will be well aware of. However, game theory´s tools have also been expanded to handle the interaction of creatures with only limited rationality, habitually engaging in specific behaviors without too much reflecting on its effects and repercussions, as Dewey or Bourdieu had it; or even entities with no rationality at all, like trees competing for sunlight. This seminar will make students familiar with some of game theory´s most central concepts and basic tools and follow up on some of game theory´s more recent developments and topics such as signaling games, bounded rationality, heterogeneity, cultural learning and transmission, absentmindedness, lack of common knowledge, self-deception, and games of persuasion.
Students are not required to possess any particular skills in mathematics; most technicalities will be explained as we go along, others will simply be skipped where intuition does suffices; and some won´t be touched for being still too complicated for now.
There are now a number of nice books on Game Theory, this class however, will basically rely on papers, which will be made available online.

19. April
Introduction, Some Esoteric Examples, and a Brief Overview

Steven J. Brams, Superior Beings. If They Exist, How would We Know?, New York: Springer 1983.

Martin Shubik, The Dollar Auction Game: A Paradox in Noncooperative Behavior and Escalation, The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 15 (1), 1971, pp. 109-111.

26. April
Rational Choice, The Fox and the Sour Grapes, and Hans in Luck

Ken Binmore, Rational Decisions, Princeton: Princeton UP 2009 (Chapter I and more)

3. May
Games in Normal and Extensive Form: Holmes & Moriaty, the Chain-Store Game and the Centipede Game

Morgenstern, Oskar, “Vollkommene Voraussicht und wirtschaftliches Gleichgewicht”, Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie VI. Bd., 3.Heft (1935), pp. 337-357.

(Selten´s Chain-Store Game and Rosenthal´s Centipede Game are dealt with in almost all Texts on Game Theory)

10. May
Constructing Pay-Off-Matrices and Identifying Equilibria: The Hobbesian Problem of Order

Thomas Hobbes, Of the Natural Conditions of Mankind, in: ders., Leviathan (ed. Edwin Curley), Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing 1994 (Chapter XIII.), pp. 74-78.

17. May
Evolutionary Games: The Hawk-Dove-Game and Some of it´s Extensions, the Attractions of Costly Rituals, and a Riddle about the Evolution of Culture

Johan Maynard Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. 1982, pp. 10-27.

Kay Junge, Materielle Kultur und Soziale Ordnung, in: Werner Rammert / Ingo Schulz-Schaeffer (eds.), Können Maschinen handeln? Soziologische Beiträge zum Verhältnis von Mensch und Technik, Frankfurt/M.: Campus 2002, pp. 223-242.

Charles Darwin, Sexual Selection + Secondary Sexual Characteristics of Birds, in: The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man, New York: The Modern Library (no year given), pp. 597-611, pp. 697-735.

Andrew Michael Spence, Market Signaling, Cambrige; Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr. 1974.

Alan Rogers, Does Biology Constrain Culture?, American Anthropologist, 90, 1989, pp. 819-831.

24. May
Bounded Rationality: The Indefinitely Repeated Prisoners Dilemma Played by Finite Automata

Kay Junge, Symbolisierung von Kooperationsnormen in Situationen elementarer Kommunikation, in: Rudolf Schlögl / Bernhard Giesen / Jürgen Osterhammel (eds.), Die Wirklichkeit der Symbole, Konstanz: Universitätsverlag Konstanz 2004, pp. 189- 231.

31. May
Reinforcement-Learning: The Emergence of Meaning and Network-structures

Ido Erev / Alvin E. Roth, On the Role of Reinforcement Learning in Experimental Games: The Cognitive Game-Theoretic Approach, in: David V. Budescu et al. (eds.), Games and Human Behavior, New York: Lawrence Earlbaum 1999, pp. 53-77.

Brian Skyrms, Choosing Partners, in: Brian Skyrms, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure, Cambridge: CUP 2004, pp. 87-103.

Brian Skyrms, Learning, in: Brian Skyrms, Signals. Evolution, Learning and Information, Oxford: OUP 2010, pp. 83-105.

7. June
(the week of reading)

14. June
Passionate Behavior and Thoughtless Conformity

David Hirshleifer, On the Emotions as Guarantors of Threats and Promises, in: John Dupre, (ed.), The Latest on the Best: Essays on Evolution and Optimality, Cambridge: MIT 1987, pp. 307-326.

Joshua M. Epstein, Generating Thoughtless Conformity to Norms, in: Joshua Epstein, Generative Social Science. Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling, Princeton: Princeton UP 2006, pp. 225-244.

21. June
Evolutionary Dynamics: The Ups and Downs of Cooperation and the Possibly Long-lasting Persistence of Discrimination

Ken Binmore / Larry Samuelson, „Evolutionary Stability in Repeated Games Played by Finite Automata“, Journal of Economic Theory, 57 (1992), pp. 278-305.

Karl Sigmund, Public Goods and Joint Efforts, in: Karl Sigmund, The Calculus of Selfishness, Princeton: Princeton U.P. 2010, pp. 123-144.

Robert L. Axtell / Joshua M. Epstein / H. Peyton Young, The Emergence of Classes in a Multi-Agent Bargaining Model, in: Steven N. Durlauf / H. Peyton Young, Social Dynamics, Cambridge, Mass.: 2001, pp. 191-211; reprinted in: Joshua M. Epstein, Generative Social Science. Studies in Agent-Based Computational Modeling, Princeton: Princeton UP 2006, pp. 175-195.

28. June
The Attractions of Heterogeneity: The Minority Game

W. Brian Arthur, Inductive Reasoning and Bounded Rationality, The American Economic Review 84, 1994, pp. 406-411.

Esteban Moro, The Minority Game: an introductory guide, in: Elka Korutcheva / Rudolfo Cuerno (eds.), Condensed Matter and Statistical Physics, Nova Science Publishers 2004 (pages unknown)

Alan Kirman, Complex Economics. Individual and Collective Rationality, London: Routledge 2011.

Julia C. Jones et al., Honey Bee Nest Thermoregulation: Diversity Promotes Stability, Science, 16. July 2004, Vol. 305, pp. 402-404.

5. July
Games of Persuasion

Hyun Song Shin, “The Burden of Proof in a Game of Persuasion”, Journal of Economic Theory, 64, 1994, pp. 253-264.

Ariel Rubinstein, Economics, Pragmatics and Seven Traps, in: ders., Economic Fables, Cambridge 2012, pp. 185-214.

Ariel Rubinstein, Strategic Considerations in Pragmatics, in: ders., Economics and Language, Cambridge U.P. 2000, pp. 37-52.

12. July
Coping with Absent-Mindedness: Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall

Michell Piccone / Ariel Rubinstein, On the Interpretation of Decision Problems with Imperfect Recall, Games and Economic Behavior 20, 1997, pp. 3-24.

Ariel Rubinstein, Modeling Bounded Rationality, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1998 (Chapter 4).

19. July
The Value of Beliefs

Roland Benabou / Jean Tirole, Self-Confidence and Personal Motivation, The Quarterly Journal of Economics 117 (3), 2002, pp. 871-915.

Kay Junge, Ambivalenz und Lüge, in: Kay Junge / Marco Gerster / Kim Claude- Meyer / Werner Binder (eds.), Kippfiguren – Ambivalenz in Bewegung, Weilerwist: Velbrück 2013, pp. 40-67.

26. July
The Challange of Complexity: Combinatorial Optimization

Jozsef Beck, A Summary of the Book in a Nutshell, in: ders., Combinatorial Games.Tic-Tac-Toe Theory, Cambridge: CUP 2008, pp.1-13.

Jonathan D. Cohen / Samuel M. McClure / Angela J. Yu, Should I stay or should I go? How the human brain manages the trade-off between exploitation and exploration, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2007.

Rémi Monasson et al., Phase Transition and Search Cost in the 2+p SAT Problem, PhysComp96