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Instructors: Leonie Geyer
Event type:
Seminar
Org-unit: Politics, Administration & International Relations
Displayed in timetable as:
Entsch. u. Spielth.
Hours per week:
3
Credits:
6,0
Note: In your exam regulations, differing credits may have been specified.
Location:
Campus der Zeppelin Universität
Language of instruction:
Englisch
Min. | Max. participants:
10 | 28
Priority scheme: Standard-Priorisierung
Course content:
Game theory is about understanding interactions between two ore more agents - referred to as players - with non-aligned preferences and motivations. Those players may be competing businesses, voters, politicians or governments. As such, game theory provides an invaluable set of tools that can be used for understanding and analyzing problems in disciplines such as economics, business and political science.
The seminar provides an introduction of decisions under uncertainty and risk (classical decision theory) and strategic decision-making (game theory). Students are introduced to the concepts of utility theory (expected utility, von Neumann-Morgenstern preferences), normal-form games (prisoner's dilemma, pareto-dominance, dominance), nash equilibrium (pure and mixed equilibria), extensive-form games (subgame-perfect equilibria).
Educational objective:
At the end of this seminar course students will have acquired
- an understanding of the key concepts of classical decision theory and game theory,
- a basic ability to understand and solve standard games,
- a basic ability to analyze real-world problem with game-theoretic solution concepts
Further information about the exams:
Readings:
A good seminar crucially depends on student participation. For this, in turn, is that you have read and understood the texts! Hence, please do read the texts. And please start reading well before the seminar. At the same time, I want to encourage you to participate in seminar
discussions actively. Every statement deserves to be heard, every question of understanding should be asked. In that spirit, I would very much like to have an open and constructive seminar atmosphere where everyone feels welcome and comfortable to contribute.
Problem Sets:
To help you to gain ease in applying the tools of decision-theory and game- theory, there will be biweekly problem sets. Make sure you give yourself enough time to complete the problem sets.You are supposed to solve the problems on your own or in small groups and to hand in your solutions via email before the class starts. The problems will be discussed in class. Everybody is supposed to take turns in presenting his or her solutions.
Final Exam, 90 minutes
Mandatory literature:
This course is not based on a textbook. The literature listed below can be helpful to get a better understanding of some concepts, but the notation and terminology might deviate from the lecture.
- Binmore, Ken. 2007. Playing for Real: A Text on Game Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Osborne, Martin J. 2009. An Introduction to Game Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Spaniel, William. 2011. Game Theory 101: The Complete Texbook.
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