The course reviews the main concepts of Game Theory, both in the non-cooperative and cooperative models, and explains their importance in economics and other social sciences.

Lectures: 10 x 2 hour lectures

Tutorials: 10 x 1 hour

None

1. In-course exam: online; Individual; 45 minutes; 30%; ILOs 1-3.

2. Degree exam: in-person; Individual; 120 minutes; 70%; ILOs 1-2, 4-5.

The aims of the course are:

■ To show that most interactions of economic agents can be modelled as strategic games for instance, oligopolistic competition, face to face bargaining, multilateral exchange, auctions, and voting by majority.

■ To formalise such interactions by means of static or dynamic games, and the key concepts of Nash equilibria and core stability.

■ To explain when and if such equilibria can be found and how to compute them.

■ To interpret the light they cast on the economic question that motivates them in the first place.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

1. engage in formal modelling of a range of economic problems;

2. develop deductive and inductive reasoning in the context of interdependent decision-making .

3. develop a critical view of the simplifying assumptions necessary to formal strategic analysis, and its ability to accurately predict individual behaviour;

4. be able to identify and compute the strategic equilibrium outcome of the most familiar "economic games";

5. be able to develop new applications of the game theoretic methodology to the behaviour of economic agents interacting in markets, elections, and other social contexts.