Games People Play: Game Theory in Life, Business, and Beyond
4: Life's Little Games-The 2 x 2 Classic Games
You examine four classic two-player games, with each player considering his or her own two choices. Simple though they may be, these games appear at the heart of larger, more complicated games and provide important insights into dealing effectively with others.
5: Guessing Right-Simultaneous Move Games
You learn a general way of representing simultaneous-move games-where players make decisions without knowing those of others-and acquire valuable tools to solve them. Military and business examples are used to introduce the minimax approach, the iterated elimination of dominated strategies, and the best response method.
7: A Random Walk-Dealing with Chance Events
Many games include aspects that depend on random chance. Probability theory addresses such uncertainties. Using a simultaneous, two-player game, Professor Stevens shows you how to use probability to define the expected (or average) value of a payoff in an uncertain situation.
9: Mixed Strategies and Nonzero-Sum Games
How should we think about mixed strategies? What makes a given strategy "best"? Is there an easy way to determine if a set of strategies is optimal? You explore these questions from a more intuitive perspective and learn how to use the techniques of Lecture 8 in nonzero-sum games.
10: Threats, Promises, and Commitments
Can you gain an advantage by moving before, the game begins? Such actions, called "strategic moves," can be both effective and dangerous. You learn the three categories of strategic moves-commitments, threats, and promises-and the essential requirement for their success: credibility....
11: Credibility, Deterrence, and Compellence
This lecture explains how a player best gains credibility for a threat, promise, or commitment and also explores how these strategic moves are most commonly and advantageously used for deterrence (meant to maintain the status quo) and compellence (meant to change it)....
14: Encouraging Productivity-Incentive Schemes
How do you get others to do what you want them to do, whether in business, politics, international relations, or daily life? You learn how players create an alignment between the behavior they desire and the rewards other players receive and examine what can be done when the behavior being addressed is not directly observable.
15: The Persistence of Memory-Repeated Games
Although the games so far have been simplified examples assuming no previous or subsequent interactions, real-life games generally don't work that way. This lecture uses an iterated game of Prisoner's Dilemma to examine the impact of repeated interactions on determining optimal strategy....
17: The Tragedy of the Commons
You explore what is essentially a many-player version of Prisoner's Dilemma. Each player's self-interested choices ironically contribute to a social dilemma in which every player suffers, in a scenario equally applicable to topics as diverse as global warming, traffic congestion, and the use of almost any nonrenewable resource....
21: Auctions and the Winner's Curse
Auctions play a significant role in our lives, affecting the ownership of radio frequencies, the flow of goods over the Internet, and even the results produced by search engines. This lecture discusses some important categories of auctions and examines which is best for buyer and seller.
23: Game Theory and Business-Co-opetition
In the first of two lectures on Brandenberger's and Nalebuff's practical application of game theory to business decision making, you learn how to construct an analytic schematic of key relationships and discuss the impact of both players and the concept of added value.
If you keep your eyes and mind open, you're going to find a lot of other places that our ideas apply.
ALMA MATER
INSTITUTION
