Economic Strategic Thinking, Spring 2012

Course description:

The aim of this course is to deepen the understanding of strategic thinking building on insights from game theory and experimental economics. Game theory, or interactive decision theory which is a more appropriate name, concerns cases when the consequences of one’s actions depend on what other agents do.

Examples of such situations are firms that compete on an oligopoly market, political candidates that position themselves before an election, fishermen that harvest the same lake, bidders in an auction and students that try to maintain a clean dormitory kitchen. Whereas game theory is largely concerned with the normative question about how rational agents ought to behave, experimental economics studies to what extent human beings behave according to the theoretical predictions.

The teaching in this course builds on classroom experiments that will be conducted in class and the discussion that follows these experiments. The focus of the course is on the main game theoretical ideas, not on the underlying mathematical theory.

For a course syllabus, see the link below.

For the mathematical introduction, please follow the link below (pdf-document).

Lecturer:

Robert Östling. Office hours: by agreement. Room: TBA, phone: 08-16 20 69,
e-mail: robert.ostling@iies.su.se

Course administrator:

Lorenz Pirus, office hours: Mon - Thu 12.30-14.30. Room A720,
phone: 08-16 21 33, e-mail: lorenz.pirus@ne.su.se

• Swedish course syllabus/English course syllabus
• Schedule
• Mathematical exercises
• Course web: https://mondo.su.se/portal
• Exam information
• Course literature:
  • Dixit, A., Skeath, S. och David H. Reiley, Games of Strategy, latest edition, W. W. Norton.
     
  • Articles: TBA.