The IGM Forum asks a panel of economists whether they agree or disagree with a given statement. The following statement drew a lot of agreement:
Showing posts with label game theory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label game theory. Show all posts
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Sunday, July 5, 2015
The lectures of the The 26th Jerusalem School in Economic Theory "Dynamic Games" - 2015, are available on video
Saturday, June 20, 2015
Thursday, June 18, 2015
Abraham Neyman's talk on Stochastic Games at the Conference in His Honor
I'm acutely aware that I'm missing two important conferences in Jerusalem during these days, in honor of Abraham Neyman, and Sergiu Hart. The Neyman Conference is underway:
Here is Neyman's talk from the conference:
Yom Holedet Sameach, Abraham! I'm sorry to have to miss the party.
Yom Holedet Sameach, Abraham! I'm sorry to have to miss the party.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Kellogg celebrates Ehud Kalai
By Kellogg Insight | Based on the insights of Ehud Kalai
"From optimizing our daily commute to choosing whether or not to purchase Apple’s latest gadget, our lives are filled with instances of strategic decision making. And while most of us are vaguely aware of the larger systems at work (the city’s transportation network; the marketplace for technology products), our main concern is to navigate the chaos of modern life.
Ehud Kalai, a professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at the Kellogg School who recently delivered the prestigious 2015 Nancy L. Schwartz Memorial Lecture, has spent his career as a game theorist trying to model this type of chaos. He views commuters and smart-watch buyers as participants in “big games”—scenarios that involve the repeated interaction of many “players,” other examples of which include financial markets, healthcare management, and the education system. Kalai is especially interested in what game theorists call “rational learning”—in other words, how people learn to play. “Rational learning,” he says, “can ultimately lead to more stability.”
Saturday, May 30, 2015
Sylvia Nasar on John Nash in the Wash Po, and John Cassidy on Nash equilibrium in the New Yorker
The Washington Post has an interview with Sylvia Nasar: The author of ‘A Beautiful Mind’ on the life and death of John Nash
Here's one question and answer:
"ZG: How did he spend the last 21 years, since he won the Nobel?
SN: The first time I saw him was a few months after he won the Nobel, and he was going to a game theory conference in Israel. He was surrounded by other mathematicians, and he looked like someone who had been mentally ill. His clothes were mismatched. His front teeth were rotted down to the gums. He didn’t make eye contact. But, over time, he got his teeth fixed. He started wearing nice clothes that Alicia could afford to buy him. He got used to being around people.
He and Alicia spent a lot of their time taking care of their son, Johnny, and doing the things that are so ordinary that the rest of us don’t think about them. Once I asked him what difference the Nobel Prize money made, and he literally said, “Well, now I can go into Starbucks and buy a $2 cup of coffee. I couldn’t do that when I was poor.” He got a driver's license. He had lunch most days with other mathematicians, reintegrating into the one community that mattered to him most.
The last time I was with him was about a year ago when Alicia organized a really lovely dinner with us and two other couples. John was talking about all the invitations they’ve gotten and all the places they’ve planned to travel. Johnny was there. He was still very sick. They took him to a lot of the places they went and always tried to include him. Their life was a mix of glamour and celebrity – and the day-to-day which revolved around Johnny, who by then was in his 50s and was as sick as his father ever was and entirely dependent on them."
**************
The New Yorker has an article by John Cassidy, on Nash equilibrium:
The Triumph (and Failure) of John Nash’s Game Theory
I was surprised to see the following, but I think it might be right--Nash's influence is ubiquitous, even when we're showing how hard it can be to reach Nash equilibrium:
"Indeed, in a 2004 article for the National Academy of Sciences that reviewed the genesis and development of Nash-based game theory, the economists Charles Holt and Alvin Roth noted, “Students in economics classes today probably hear John Nash’s name as much as or more than that of any economist.”"
Here's one question and answer:
"ZG: How did he spend the last 21 years, since he won the Nobel?
SN: The first time I saw him was a few months after he won the Nobel, and he was going to a game theory conference in Israel. He was surrounded by other mathematicians, and he looked like someone who had been mentally ill. His clothes were mismatched. His front teeth were rotted down to the gums. He didn’t make eye contact. But, over time, he got his teeth fixed. He started wearing nice clothes that Alicia could afford to buy him. He got used to being around people.
He and Alicia spent a lot of their time taking care of their son, Johnny, and doing the things that are so ordinary that the rest of us don’t think about them. Once I asked him what difference the Nobel Prize money made, and he literally said, “Well, now I can go into Starbucks and buy a $2 cup of coffee. I couldn’t do that when I was poor.” He got a driver's license. He had lunch most days with other mathematicians, reintegrating into the one community that mattered to him most.
The last time I was with him was about a year ago when Alicia organized a really lovely dinner with us and two other couples. John was talking about all the invitations they’ve gotten and all the places they’ve planned to travel. Johnny was there. He was still very sick. They took him to a lot of the places they went and always tried to include him. Their life was a mix of glamour and celebrity – and the day-to-day which revolved around Johnny, who by then was in his 50s and was as sick as his father ever was and entirely dependent on them."
**************
The New Yorker has an article by John Cassidy, on Nash equilibrium:
The Triumph (and Failure) of John Nash’s Game Theory
I was surprised to see the following, but I think it might be right--Nash's influence is ubiquitous, even when we're showing how hard it can be to reach Nash equilibrium:
"Indeed, in a 2004 article for the National Academy of Sciences that reviewed the genesis and development of Nash-based game theory, the economists Charles Holt and Alvin Roth noted, “Students in economics classes today probably hear John Nash’s name as much as or more than that of any economist.”"
Tuesday, May 26, 2015
Bob Aumann remembers John Nash
From Ynet..
.
John Nash, a teacher and a mentor
I met him in 1953, when he was a young lecturer who had just started teaching at the university and I was coming to the end of my doctorate. He was the one who first introduced me to game theory. He is my first mentor and teacher on the subject.
John Nash. A giant in his field. (Photo: Peter Badge / Typos 1)
The truth is that I didn't give the field much thought at the time because I was busy with pure mathematics. Later, however, when I moved to a performance studies consulting firm, I encountered a difficult problem and then I realized the importance of game theory – and I recalled my conversations with Nash.
John Nash is definitely one of the giants of game theory, which is an important tool in economics and numerous other areas. He invented it, the key concept known as "equilibrium strategy;" and not only did he found the field, but he was also a game-theory giant. And he was also one of the first to receive a Nobel Prize for game theory. It was in 1994, and he shared it with two others. I am shocked to hear of his death.
In recent years, we met at least once a year at international conferences. He knew a lot – not only about mathematics but about everything, and you could talk to him about what is happening in the world.
Nash came to Israel in 1995, on my 65th birthday, which took place at the Tower of David in the form of a celebration and conference. It was a year after he received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The science world and I will certainly miss him."
.
John Nash, a teacher and a mentor
Nash was definitely one of the giants of game theory, writes Israeli Nobel laureate Yisrael Aumann, and the science world will miss him.
Prof. Yisrael Aumann
|
I met him in 1953, when he was a young lecturer who had just started teaching at the university and I was coming to the end of my doctorate. He was the one who first introduced me to game theory. He is my first mentor and teacher on the subject.
John Nash. A giant in his field. (Photo: Peter Badge / Typos 1)
The truth is that I didn't give the field much thought at the time because I was busy with pure mathematics. Later, however, when I moved to a performance studies consulting firm, I encountered a difficult problem and then I realized the importance of game theory – and I recalled my conversations with Nash.
John Nash is definitely one of the giants of game theory, which is an important tool in economics and numerous other areas. He invented it, the key concept known as "equilibrium strategy;" and not only did he found the field, but he was also a game-theory giant. And he was also one of the first to receive a Nobel Prize for game theory. It was in 1994, and he shared it with two others. I am shocked to hear of his death.
In recent years, we met at least once a year at international conferences. He knew a lot – not only about mathematics but about everything, and you could talk to him about what is happening in the world.
Nash came to Israel in 1995, on my 65th birthday, which took place at the Tower of David in the form of a celebration and conference. It was a year after he received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The science world and I will certainly miss him."
Sunday, May 24, 2015
John Nash: 1928-2015. RIP
John and Alicia Nash have died in a car accident.
Here's the news story: Famed Princeton mathematician John Nash, wife killed in taxi crash
Here's the NY Times obituary: John F. Nash Jr., Mathematician Whose Life Story Inspired ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ Dies at 86
Here's the news story: Famed Princeton mathematician John Nash, wife killed in taxi crash
Here's the NY Times obituary: John F. Nash Jr., Mathematician Whose Life Story Inspired ‘A Beautiful Mind,’ Dies at 86
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Royal Economic Society-York Symposium and Mini-Courses on Game Theory, 21-23 May 2015
The 2015 RES-York Symposium and Mini-Courses on Game Theory, the 6th of the series of York Annual Symposium on Game Theory, will be held on 21-23 May 2015 at the Department of Economics and Related Studies, University of York, UK.
The four keynote speakers of the Symposium (21-22 May 2015) are:
Bhaskar Dutta (Warwick)
Stephen Morris (Princeton)
Michael Ostrovsky (Stanford)
Eyal Winter (HUJerusalem & Leicester)
The event is organised by the Micro Theory Research Cluster at the Department of Economics and Related Studies (DERS), University of York, and is jointly supported by the Royal Economic Society and the departmental Research Impact Support (RIS) Fund at DERS, University of York.
Mini-Courses
Right after the Symposium, on Saturday 23 May 2015, we will run two mini-courses delivered by Professor Bhaskar Dutta (Warwick) and Professor Michael Ostrovsky (Stanford), respectively.
Professor Bhaskar Dutta will deliver a mini-course on "Games on Networks".
Professor Michael Ostrovsky will deliver a mini-course on the topic "Matching in Trading Networks". The background reading can be downloaded below at this webpage.
The schedule on Saturday 23 May 2015 is as follows.
9:00-10:30 Course by Prof. Bhaskar Dutta
10:45-12:15 Course by Prof. Michael Ostrovsky
12:15-13:15 Lunch
13:15-14:45 Course by Prof. Bhaskar Dutta
15:00-16:30 Course by Prof. Michael Ostrovsky
Monday, April 20, 2015
Dynamic Games: 26th Jerusalem Summer School in Economic Theory (deadline April 27)
26th Jerusalem School in Economic Theory
Dynamic Games
Organizers:
- Eric Maskin, Director (Harvard University)
Elchanan Ben-Porath, Codirector (The Hebrew University)
Drew Fudenberg (Harvard University)
In many economic, social, and political settings, participants interact strategically not just once but over time.
When raising its import tariffs today, for example, a country will try to anticipate the reactions of its trading partners tomorrow. And an oligopolistic firm can learn from its rivals’ past pricing behavior so as to gauge what prices they are likely to set now.
The Summer School will emphasize theoretical aspects of dynamic games, but will also include work on experiments.
List of speakers:
Robert Aumann (The Hebrew University)
Martin Cripps (University College London)
Guillaume Fréchette (New York University)
Drew Fudenberg (Harvard University)
Sergiu Hart (The Hebrew University)
Johannes Hörner (Yale University)
Navin Kartik (Columbia University)
George Mailath (University of Pennsylvania)
Eric Maskin (Harvard University)
Abraham Neyman (The Hebrew University)
Larry Samuelson (Yale University)
Alistair Wilson (University of Pittsburgh)
Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Repeated Games, by Jean-Francois Mertens, Sylvain Sorin, and Shmuel Zamir
Repeated games can last a long time, and it turns out they also take a long time to write about. But the wait is over for the definitive book that Bob Aumann, in his foreword, notes was fifty years in the making.
Repeated Games, by Jean-François Mertens, Sylvain Sorin, Shmuel Zamir
Aumann has written a five page, fascinating historical foreword that is well worth reading. Here are a few paragraphs:
"The theory born in the mid to late sixties under the Mathematica-ACDA project started to grow and develop soon thereafter. For many years, I was a frequent visitor at CORE – the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics – founded in the late sixties by Jacques Dreze as a unit of the ancient university of Leuven-Louvain in Belgium. Probably my first visit was in 1968 or ’69, at which time I met the brilliant, flamboyant young mathematician Jean-Francois Mertens (a little reminiscent of John Nash at MIT in the early fifties). One Friday afternoon, Jean-Francois took me in his Alfa-Romeo from Leuven to Brussels, driving at 215 km/hour, never slowing down, never sounding the horn, just blinking his lights – and indeed, the cars in front of him moved out of his way with alacrity. I told him about the formula, in terms of the concavification operator, for the value of an infinitely repeated two-person zero-sum game with one-sided incomplete information – which is the same as the limit of values of the n-times repeated games. He caught on immediately; the whole conversation, including the proof, took something like five or ten minutes. Those conversations – especially the vast array of fascinating, challenging open problems – hooked him; it was like taking a mountain climber to a peak in the foothills of a great mountain range, from where he could see all the beautiful unclimbed peaks. The area became a lifelong obsession with him; he reached the most challenging peaks.
"At about the same time, Shmuel Zamir, a physics student at the Hebrew University, asked to do a math doctorate with me. Though a little skeptical, I was impressed by the young man, and decided to give it a try. I have never regretted that decision; Shmuel became a pillar of modern game theory, responsible for some of the most important results, not to speak of the tasks he has undertaken for the community. One problem treated in his thesis is estimating the error term in the above-mentioned limit of values; his seminal work in that area remains remarkable to this day. When Maschler and I published our Mathematica-ACDA reports in the early nineties, we included postscripts with notes on subsequent developments. The day that our typist came to the description of Zamir’s work, a Jerusalem bus was bombed by a terrorist, resulting in many dead and wounded civilians. By a slip of the pen – no doubt Freudian – she typed “terror term” instead of “error term.” Mike did not catch the slip, but I did, and to put the work in its historical context, purposely refrained from correcting it; it remains in the book to this day.
"After finishing his doctorate, Shmuel – like many of my students – did a postdoctoral stint at CORE. While there, he naturally met up with JeanFrancois, and an immensely fruitful lifelong collaboration ensued. Together they attacked and solved many of the central unsolved problems of Repeated Game theory.
"One of their beautiful results concerns the limit of values of n-times repeated two-person zero-sum games with incomplete information on both sides – like the original repeated Geneva negotiations, where neither the US nor the SU knew how many nuclear weapons the other side held. In the Mathematica-ACDA work, Maschler, Stearns, and I had shown that the infinite repetition of such games need not have a value: the minmax may be strictly greater than the maxmin. Very roughly, that is because, as mentioned above, using information involves revealing it. The minmax is attained when the maximizing player uses his information, thereby revealing it; but the minimizing player refrains from using her information until she has learned the maximizing player’s information, and so can use it, in addition to her own. The maxmin is attained in the opposite situation, when he waits for her. In the infinitely repeated game, no initial segment affects the payoff, so each side waits for the other to use its information; the upshot is that there is no value – no way of playing a “long” repetition optimally, if you don’t know how long it is.
"But in the n-times repeated game, you can’t afford waiting to use your information; the repetition will eventually end, rendering your information useless. Each side must use its information gradually, right from the start, thereby gradually revealing it; simultaneously, each side gradually learns the information revealed by the other, and so can – and does – use it. So it is natural to ask whether the values converge – whether one can speak of the value of a “long” repetition, without saying how long. Mike, Dick, and I did not succeed in answering this question. Mertens and Zamir did: they showed that the values indeed converge. Thus one can speak of the value of a “long” repetition without saying how long, even though one cannot speak of optimal play in such a setting. This result was published in the first issue – Vol. 1, No. 1 – of the International Journal of Game Theory, of which Zamir is now, over forty years later, the editor.
"The Mertens–Zamir team made many other seminal contributions. Perhaps best known is their construction of the complete type space. This is not directly related to repeated games, but rather to all incomplete information situations – it fully justifies John Harsanyi’s ingenious concept of “type” to represent multi-agent incomplete information.
"I vividly remember my first meeting with Sylvain Sorin. It was after giving a seminar on repeated games (of complete information, to the best of my recall) in Paris, sometime in the late seventies, perhaps around 1978 or ’79. There is a picture in my head of standing in front of a grand Paris building, built in the classical style with a row of Greek columns in front, and discussing repeated games with a lanky young French mathematician who actually understood everything I was saying – and more. I don’t remember the contents of the conversation; but the picture is there, in my mind, vividly.
"There followed years and decades of close cooperation between Sylvain, Jean-Francois, Shmuel, and other top Israeli mathematical game theorists...
******************
(The book seems to be available online for free to members of the Econometric Society, and here is some other information:
Cambridge Books Online http://ebooks.cambridge.org/
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139343275 )
Repeated Games, by Jean-François Mertens, Sylvain Sorin, Shmuel Zamir
Aumann has written a five page, fascinating historical foreword that is well worth reading. Here are a few paragraphs:
"The theory born in the mid to late sixties under the Mathematica-ACDA project started to grow and develop soon thereafter. For many years, I was a frequent visitor at CORE – the Center for Operations Research and Econometrics – founded in the late sixties by Jacques Dreze as a unit of the ancient university of Leuven-Louvain in Belgium. Probably my first visit was in 1968 or ’69, at which time I met the brilliant, flamboyant young mathematician Jean-Francois Mertens (a little reminiscent of John Nash at MIT in the early fifties). One Friday afternoon, Jean-Francois took me in his Alfa-Romeo from Leuven to Brussels, driving at 215 km/hour, never slowing down, never sounding the horn, just blinking his lights – and indeed, the cars in front of him moved out of his way with alacrity. I told him about the formula, in terms of the concavification operator, for the value of an infinitely repeated two-person zero-sum game with one-sided incomplete information – which is the same as the limit of values of the n-times repeated games. He caught on immediately; the whole conversation, including the proof, took something like five or ten minutes. Those conversations – especially the vast array of fascinating, challenging open problems – hooked him; it was like taking a mountain climber to a peak in the foothills of a great mountain range, from where he could see all the beautiful unclimbed peaks. The area became a lifelong obsession with him; he reached the most challenging peaks.
"At about the same time, Shmuel Zamir, a physics student at the Hebrew University, asked to do a math doctorate with me. Though a little skeptical, I was impressed by the young man, and decided to give it a try. I have never regretted that decision; Shmuel became a pillar of modern game theory, responsible for some of the most important results, not to speak of the tasks he has undertaken for the community. One problem treated in his thesis is estimating the error term in the above-mentioned limit of values; his seminal work in that area remains remarkable to this day. When Maschler and I published our Mathematica-ACDA reports in the early nineties, we included postscripts with notes on subsequent developments. The day that our typist came to the description of Zamir’s work, a Jerusalem bus was bombed by a terrorist, resulting in many dead and wounded civilians. By a slip of the pen – no doubt Freudian – she typed “terror term” instead of “error term.” Mike did not catch the slip, but I did, and to put the work in its historical context, purposely refrained from correcting it; it remains in the book to this day.
"After finishing his doctorate, Shmuel – like many of my students – did a postdoctoral stint at CORE. While there, he naturally met up with JeanFrancois, and an immensely fruitful lifelong collaboration ensued. Together they attacked and solved many of the central unsolved problems of Repeated Game theory.
"One of their beautiful results concerns the limit of values of n-times repeated two-person zero-sum games with incomplete information on both sides – like the original repeated Geneva negotiations, where neither the US nor the SU knew how many nuclear weapons the other side held. In the Mathematica-ACDA work, Maschler, Stearns, and I had shown that the infinite repetition of such games need not have a value: the minmax may be strictly greater than the maxmin. Very roughly, that is because, as mentioned above, using information involves revealing it. The minmax is attained when the maximizing player uses his information, thereby revealing it; but the minimizing player refrains from using her information until she has learned the maximizing player’s information, and so can use it, in addition to her own. The maxmin is attained in the opposite situation, when he waits for her. In the infinitely repeated game, no initial segment affects the payoff, so each side waits for the other to use its information; the upshot is that there is no value – no way of playing a “long” repetition optimally, if you don’t know how long it is.
"But in the n-times repeated game, you can’t afford waiting to use your information; the repetition will eventually end, rendering your information useless. Each side must use its information gradually, right from the start, thereby gradually revealing it; simultaneously, each side gradually learns the information revealed by the other, and so can – and does – use it. So it is natural to ask whether the values converge – whether one can speak of the value of a “long” repetition, without saying how long. Mike, Dick, and I did not succeed in answering this question. Mertens and Zamir did: they showed that the values indeed converge. Thus one can speak of the value of a “long” repetition without saying how long, even though one cannot speak of optimal play in such a setting. This result was published in the first issue – Vol. 1, No. 1 – of the International Journal of Game Theory, of which Zamir is now, over forty years later, the editor.
"The Mertens–Zamir team made many other seminal contributions. Perhaps best known is their construction of the complete type space. This is not directly related to repeated games, but rather to all incomplete information situations – it fully justifies John Harsanyi’s ingenious concept of “type” to represent multi-agent incomplete information.
"I vividly remember my first meeting with Sylvain Sorin. It was after giving a seminar on repeated games (of complete information, to the best of my recall) in Paris, sometime in the late seventies, perhaps around 1978 or ’79. There is a picture in my head of standing in front of a grand Paris building, built in the classical style with a row of Greek columns in front, and discussing repeated games with a lanky young French mathematician who actually understood everything I was saying – and more. I don’t remember the contents of the conversation; but the picture is there, in my mind, vividly.
"There followed years and decades of close cooperation between Sylvain, Jean-Francois, Shmuel, and other top Israeli mathematical game theorists...
******************
(The book seems to be available online for free to members of the Econometric Society, and here is some other information:
Cambridge Books Online http://ebooks.cambridge.org/
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139343275 )
Sunday, March 8, 2015
Dynamic games in this summer's Jerusalem School of Economic Theory, June 24-July 3 2015
...with some experimenters on the faculty too...
Event date: Jun 24 - Jul 3, 2015
Organizers:
26th Jerusalem School in Economic Theory
Dynamic Games
Organizers:
- Eric Maskin, Director (Harvard University)
Elchanan Ben-Porath, Codirector (The Hebrew University)
Drew Fudenberg (Harvard University)
In many economic, social, and political settings, participants interact strategically not just once but over time.
When raising its import tariffs today, for example, a country will try to anticipate the reactions of its trading partners tomorrow. And an oligopolistic firm can learn from its rivals’ past pricing behavior so as to gauge what prices they are likely to set now.
The Summer School will emphasize theoretical aspects of dynamic games, but will also include work on experiments.
List of speakers:
Robert Aumann (The Hebrew University)
Martin Cripps (University College London)
Guillaume Fréchette (New York University)
Drew Fudenberg (Harvard University)
Sergiu Hart (The Hebrew University)
Johannes Hörner (Yale University)
Navin Kartik (Columbia University)
George Mailath (University of Pennsylvania)
Eric Maskin (Harvard University)
Abraham Neyman (The Hebrew University)
Larry Samuelson (Yale University)
Alistair Wilson (University of Pittsburgh)
Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Tomas Sjostrom on the Nobel Economics Prize committee
The Daily Targum, the student newspaper of Rutgers university, talks to Tomas Sjostrom about his work as a member of the committee that selects the recipients for the Nobel Economics Prize.
Professor details dual role as Nobel Prize Committee member
"in February, Sjostrom and his colleague on the committee will start to go through the extensive list of promising candidates.
“After reducing the list to reasonable nominations, we discuss the candidates [for] meetings after meetings as the spring goes on,” Sjostrom said. "
Professor details dual role as Nobel Prize Committee member
"in February, Sjostrom and his colleague on the committee will start to go through the extensive list of promising candidates.
“After reducing the list to reasonable nominations, we discuss the candidates [for] meetings after meetings as the spring goes on,” Sjostrom said. "
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets at Stanford SITE, July 21-23
STANFORD INSTITUTE FOR THEORETICAL ECONOMICS (SITE)
Session 3: Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets
Session 3: Dynamic Games, Contracts, and Markets
Monday, July 21, 2014
8:30 am to 9:00 am
Check-in and Breakfast
9:00 am to 9:45 am
Dynamic Trading: Price Inertia, Front-Running and Relationship Banking
Presented by: Yuliy Sannikov, Princeton University
9:45 am to 10:00 am
Coffee Break
10:00 am to 10:45 am
Dynamic Ex Post Equilibrium, Welfare, and Optimal Trading Frequency in Double Auctions
Presented by: Songzi Du, Simon Fraser University; Haoxiang Zhu, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
10:45 am to 11:00 am
Coffee Break
11:00 am to 11:45 am
TBA
Presented by: Zhiguo He, University of Chicago
11:45 am to 1:30 pm
Lunchtime Discussion
1:30 pm to 2:15 pm
Labor Union Members Play an OLG Repeated Game
Presented by: Michihiro Kandori, University of Tokyo; Shinya Obayashi, Tohoku University
2:15 pm to 2:30 pm
Coffee Break
2:30 pm to 3:15 pm
Perfect Versus Imperfect Monitoring in Repeated Games
Presented by: Takuo Sugaya, Stanford University; Alexander Wolitzky, Stanford University
3:15 pm to 3:30 pm
Coffee Break
3:30 pm to 4:15 pm
Reputation Without Commitment
Presented by: Jonathan Weinstein, Northwestern University; Muhamet Yildiz, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
DinnerTuesday, July 22, 2014
8:30 am to 9:00 am
Check-in and Breakfast
9:00 am to 9:45 am
The Value of a Reputation Under Imperfect Monitoring
Presented by: Martin Cripps, University College London; Eduardo Faingold, Yale University
9:45 am to 10:00 am
Coffee Break
10:00 am to 10:45 am
A Reputational Theory of Firm Dynamics
Presented by: Simon Board, University of California, Los Angeles; Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn, University of California, Los Angeles
10:45 am to 11:00 am
Coffee Break
11:00 am to 11:45 am
Managerial Attention and Worker Engagement
Presented by: Marina Halac, Columbia Business School; Andrea Prat, Columbia University
11:45 am to 1:30 pm
Lunchtime Discussion
1:30 pm to 2:15 pm
Beeps
Presented by: Jeff Ely, Northwestern University
2:15 pm to 2:30 pm
Coffee Break
2:30 pm to 3:15 pm
Dynamic Delegation of Experimentation
Presented by: Yingni Guo, Northwestern University
3:15 pm to 3:30 pm
Coffee Break
3:30 pm to 4:15 pm
Optimal Design of Internal Disclosure
Presented by: Dmitry Orlov, Stanford University
6:00 pm to 8:30 pm
DinnerWednesday, July 23, 2014
8:30 am to 9:00 am
Check-in and Breakfast
9:00 am to 9:45 am
Auctions with Limited Commitment
Presented by: Konrad Mierendorff, University of Zurich
9:45 am to 10:00 am
Coffee Break
10:00 am to 10:45 am
Dynamic Eliciting Unobservable Information
Presented by: Nicolas Lambert, Stanford University
10:45 am to 11:00 am
Coffee Break
11:00 am to 11:45 am
Making Collusion Hard: Asymmetric Information as a Counter-Corruption Measure
Presented by: Sylvain Chassang, Princeton University; Juan Ortner, Boston University
11:45 am to 1:30 pm
Lunchtime Discussion
1:30 pm to 2:15 pm
Efficient Firm Dynamics in a Frictional Labor Market
Presented by: Leo Kaas, University of Konstanz
2:15 pm to 2:30 pm
Coffee Break
2:30 pm to 3:15 pm
Optimal Financial Regulation and the Concentration of Aggregate Risk
Presented by: Sebastian Di Tella, Stanford University
3:15 pm to 3:30 pm
Coffee Break
3:30 pm to 4:15 pm
Dynamic Markets for Lemons: Performance, Liquidity, and Policy Intervention
Presented by: Diego Moreno, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; John Wooders, University of Technology Sydney
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Harold Kuhn 1925-2014
"Harold Kuhn, a Princeton University mathematician who advanced game theory approaches to economics, died of congestive heart failure on July 2. He was 88 years old.
...
"While Kuhn was working on his dissertation, he began exploring the emerging field of game theory, which focuses on the behavior of decision makers whose choices affect each other. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he was involved in organizing many conferences in game theory. John Nash was a classmate, and in 1994 Kuhn was invited by the Nobel Prize committee to chair a panel discussion of Nash’s work on the occasion of Nash’s award of the Nobel Prize in economics.
“Game theory blossomed in Princeton in the mid-20th century. Kuhn was a key member of a brilliant group that ushered it in, which included the genius John von Neumann and Nobel Prize winners John Nash, Lloyd Shapley and Robert Aumann, amongst other greats,” said Dilip Abreu, a professor of finance and economics at Princeton. “Kuhn’s now-standard formulation of extensive form games completely eclipsed von Neumann’s own, and his results on imperfect recall, mixed and behavioral strategies continue to stimulate, intrigue and delight.”
More here:
"Kuhn wrote a dissertation in geometric group theory advised by Professor Ralph Fox. Concurrently, he began a long collaboration with Professor Albert Tucker and fellow graduate student David Gale exploring and developing the emerging fields of nonlinear optimization and game theory, which focuses on the behavior of decision makers whose choices affect each other. Another fellow student was John Nash, and in 1994, Kuhn was invited by the Nobel Prize committee to chair a panel discussion of Nash's work, on the occasion of Nash's award of the Nobel Prize in economics.
In 1951, Kuhn and Tucker described what are known as the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions for nonlinear programming, now an economics staple that address optimization within constraints. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Kuhn was involved in organizing conferences in game theory. "
Here are two pictures I snapped of Kuhn, one with his wife Estelle, and one with the late Bill Lucas, at a festival in honor of Lloyd Shapley at Stony Brook in July 2003.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Cornes and Neto celebrate Gale and Shapley, and the practical value of good theory
Here's a paper that points out that there's nothing more practical--even for policy--than good theory, and that it might be hard to guess where that will come from.
I was struck not just by the title of the paper, but by the parenthetical comment in the first sentence of the abstract...
Is Policy Too Important to be Left to Empiricists? Lessons of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics
Richard Cornes and José A. Rodrigues-Neto
Abstract
Fifty years ago, a paper entitled ‘College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage’was published in a somewhat obscure journal, the American Mathematical Monthly (currently a ‘B’ journal, according to the Australian Business Deans Council). The research program and policy developments that have flowed from that abstract and apparently slight seven-page paper recently led to the award of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Economics to one of its authors, Lloyd Shapley. (Shapley’s co-author, David Gale, died in 2008.) Shapley shared the Nobel Prize ‘for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design’ with US economist Alvin Roth, who has been responsible for much of the applied work that has built on Gale and Shapley’s insights. The history of the path leading from the abstract Gale/Shapley insights to the design of resource allocation mechanisms in 2012 is a fascinating and instructive one for many reasons. This article tries to give the reader an idea of what this literature is about, and of the many ways in which Matching Theory has led to real improvements in the design of operational resource-allocation mechanisms.
**************
The article makes some points about how funny sounding theory can turn into practical institutions that were also made in the recent Golden Goose awards (see this post and this one).
I was struck not just by the title of the paper, but by the parenthetical comment in the first sentence of the abstract...
Is Policy Too Important to be Left to Empiricists? Lessons of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics
Richard Cornes and José A. Rodrigues-Neto
Abstract
Fifty years ago, a paper entitled ‘College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage’was published in a somewhat obscure journal, the American Mathematical Monthly (currently a ‘B’ journal, according to the Australian Business Deans Council). The research program and policy developments that have flowed from that abstract and apparently slight seven-page paper recently led to the award of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Economics to one of its authors, Lloyd Shapley. (Shapley’s co-author, David Gale, died in 2008.) Shapley shared the Nobel Prize ‘for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design’ with US economist Alvin Roth, who has been responsible for much of the applied work that has built on Gale and Shapley’s insights. The history of the path leading from the abstract Gale/Shapley insights to the design of resource allocation mechanisms in 2012 is a fascinating and instructive one for many reasons. This article tries to give the reader an idea of what this literature is about, and of the many ways in which Matching Theory has led to real improvements in the design of operational resource-allocation mechanisms.
**************
The article makes some points about how funny sounding theory can turn into practical institutions that were also made in the recent Golden Goose awards (see this post and this one).
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
Prize in Game Theory and Computer Science to Edelman, Ostrovsky and Schwarz, and Varian
Here's the prize announcement:
Prize in Game Theory and Computer Science of the Game Theory Society
in Honour of Ehud Kalai, endowed by Yoav Shoham
Following the Call for Nominations, the 2013 Prize is awarded in equal parts to Benjamin Edelman, Michael Ostrovsky, Michael Schwarz, and Hal R. Varian for their papers
Benjamin Edelman, Michael Ostrovsky, and Michael Schwarz, "Internet Advertising and the Generalized Second-Price Auction: Selling Billions of Dollars Worth of Keywords," American Economic Review 97, pages 242-259, 2007,
and
Hal R. Varian, "Position Auctions," International Journal of Industrial Organization 25, pages 1163-1178, 2007,
for their fundamental analysis of Online Advertisement Auctions.
The Prize committee, appointed by Roger Myerson as President of the Game Theory Society, consisted in 2013 of Paul W. Goldberg, Kevin Leyton-Brown, Éva Tardos, and Bernhard von Stengel.
In their report to the President, they stated their reasons for selecting this work as follows, referring to the papers as "EOS" and "Varian":
A very significant body of research at the interface of game theory and computer science concerns the design of automated mechanisms for economic transactions, which typically take place on the internet. A prime example are advertisements that search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo! place next to the results of internet searches for a given keyword. When a user clicks on such an ad, the search engine receives money from the advertiser. The payment is determined by an auction mechanism that computes the available advertisement "slots" to the bids which are dynamically provided by the bidders for each keyword search.
EOS and Varian (independently) analyzed an auction format known as the "generalized second price auction", a term coined by EOS, which is now used by the major search engines. Their work is of unparalleled theoretical and practical influence. At the time of this writing, it has attracted over 1,400 combined citations (about 800 for EOS and 600 for Varian) and the two articles are by far the most influential papers in the area.
The design of market mechanisms that are implemented algorithmically represents a most fruitful interaction of game theory and computer science. The work of EOS and Varian has spawned research - and, also significantly, attractive jobs for economic and computing theorists - to an extent that they clearly deserve the Prize.
Congratulations to the winners! They will present their work at the occasion of the award on July 17, 2013, at the Workshop on Computational Game Theory in Stony Brook, New York.
Call for nominations - Prize in Game Theory and Computer Science
(mailed to GTS members by Roger Myerson on 25 April 2013)
The Prize in Game Theory and Computer Science of the Game Theory Society was established in 2008 by a donation from Yoav Shoham in recognition of Ehud Kalai's role in promoting the connection of the two research areas. The last time the Prize was awarded at the Third World Congress of the Society in 2008 in Evanston. This time, the Prize will in 2013 be awarded at the Workshop on Computational Game Theory in Stony Brook, New York (July 16-18, 2013).
The Prize will be awarded to the person (or persons) who have published the best paper at the interface of game theory and computer science in the last decade. Preference will be given to candidates of age 45 or less at the time of the award, but this is not an absolute constraint. The amount of the Prize will be USD 2,500 plus travel expenses of up to USD 2,500 to attend the scientific event where the Prize is awarded.
The Game Theory Society invites nominations for the Prize. Each nomination should include a full copy of the paper (in pdf format) plus an extended abstract, not exceeding two pages, that explains the nature and importance of the contribution.
Nominations should be emailed to the Society's Secretary-Treasurer, Federico Valenciano (at federico.valenciano@ehu.es ) by 15 May 2013. The selection will be made by a committee appointed by the President, and the result will be announced in June 2013.
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