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An Introduction to
Game Theory Martin J. Osborne
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Game-Theoretic
Reasoning pervades economic theory and is used widely in other social and
behavioral sciences. This book presents the main ideas of game theory and
shows how they can be used to understand economic, social, political, and
biological phenomena. It assumes no knowledge of economics, political
science, or any other social or behavioral science. It emphasizes the ideas
behind the theory rather than their mathematical expression and assumes no
specific mathematical knowledge beyond that typically taught in The only way to
appreciate the theory is to see it in action, or better still to put it into
action. So the book includes a wide variety of illustrations from the social
and behavioral sciences, and over 280 exercises. Each topic is presented
with the aid of "Examples", which highlight theoretical points, and
"Illustrations", which demonstrate how the theory may be used to
understand social, economic, political, and biological phenomena. The "Illustrations"
introduce no new theoretical points, and any or all of them may be skipped
without loss of continuity. The "Illustrations" for the key models
of strategic and extensive games are grouped in separate Chapters (3 and 6). The limited
dependencies between chapters mean that several routes may be taken through
the book:
Whichever route you
take, you can choose the examples and illustrations to fit one of several
themes. You can, for instance, study all the economic examples, or all the
political or biological ones. Alternatively, you can build a course around
all the examples on a more narrow topic; two
possibilities are auction theory and oligopoly theory. All the material is
intended to be accessible to undergraduate students. A one-semester course
for third or fourth year North American economics majors (who have been
exposed to a few of the main ideas in the first and second year courses)
could cover up to about half the material in the book in moderate detail. Osbourne and Rubinstein (1994), a graduate
text, offers a more advanced treatment of the field. With few exceptions, the
two books use the same notation and terminology. The exceptions are noted on
the website for this book. |
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