Ratiojal Behavior And Bargaining Equilibrium In Games And Social Situations

This is a paperback edition of a major contribution to the field, first published in hard covers in 1977. The book outlines a general theory of rational behaviour consisting of individual decision theory, ethics, and game theory as its main branches. Decision theory deals with a rational pursuit of individual utility; ethics with a rational pursuit of the common interests of society; and game theory with an interaction of two or more rational individuals, each pursuing his own interests in a rational manner.

This is a paperback edition of a major contribution to the field, first published in hard covers in 1977. The book outlines a general theory of rational behaviour consisting of individual decision theory, ethics, and game theory as its main branches. Decision theory deals with a rational pursuit of individual utility; ethics with a rational pursuit of the common interests of society; and game theory with an interaction of two or more rational individuals, each pursuing his own interests in a rational manner.

This volume contains twelve of my game-theoretical papers, published in the period of 1956-80. It complements my Essays on Ethics, Social Behavior, and Scientific Explanation, Reidel, 1976, and my Rational Behavior and Bargaining Equilibrium in Games and Social Situations, Cambridge University Press, 1977. These twelve papers deal with a wide range of game-theoretical problems. But there is a common intellectual thread going though all of them: they are all parts of an attempt to generalize and combine various game-theoretical solution concepts into a unified solution theory yielding one-point solutions for both cooperative and noncooperative games, and covering even such 'non-classical' games as games with incomplete information. SECTION A The first three papers deal with bargaining models. The first one discusses Nash's two-person bargaining solution and shows its equivalence with Zeuthen's bargaining theory. The second considers the rationality postulates underlying the Nash-Zeuthen theory and defends it against Schelling's objections. The third extends the Shapley value to games without transferable utility and proposes a solution concept that is at the same time a generaliza tion of the Shapley value and of the Nash bargaining solution.

An introduction to game theory that offers not only theoretical tools but also the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. This introductory text on game theory provides students with both the theoretical tools to analyze situations through the logic of game theory and the intuition and behavioral insights to apply these tools to real-world situations. It is unique among game theory texts in offering a clear, formal introduction to standard game theory while incorporating evidence from experimental data and introducing recent behavioral models. Students will not only learn about incentives, how to represent situations as games, and what agents “should” do in these situations, but they will also be presented with evidence that either confirms the theoretical assumptions or suggests a way in which the theory might be updated. Features: Each chapter begins with a motivating example that can be run as an experiment and ends with a discussion of the behavior in the example. Parts I–IV cover the fundamental “nuts and bolts” of any introductory game theory course, including the theory of games, simple games with simultaneous decision making by players, sequential move games, and incomplete information in simultaneous and sequential move games. Parts V–VII apply the tools developed in previous sections to bargaining, cooperative game theory, market design, social dilemmas, and social choice and voting. Part VIII offers a more in-depth discussion of behavioral game theory models including evolutionary and psychological game theory. Instructor resources include solutions to end-of-chapter exercises, worksheets for running each chapter's experimental games using pencil and paper, and the oTree codes for running the games online.

The book reports on recent experimental research on expectations and decision making in bargaining, markets, auctions, or coalition formation situations. The investi- gated topics deliver building stones for a bounded rational theory as an approach to explain behavior and interpersonal interactions in economic and social relationships.

The papers appearing in this Volume were selected from a collec tion of papers presented at the Internationa~ Symposium on Extrema~ Methods and Systems Ana~ysis on the Occasion of Professor A. Charnes' 60th Birthday, at the University of Texas in Austin, 13-15 September 1977. As coeditors, we have followed the normal editorial procedures of scholarly journals. We have obtained invaluable assistance from a number of colleagues who essentially performed the duties of associate editors, coordinating most of the reviews. All papers except those appearing in the Historica~ Perspectives section were refereed by at least two individuals with competency in the respective area. Because of the wide range and diversity of the topics, it would have been im possible for us to make a consistently rational selection of papers without the help of the associate editors and referees. We are indeed grateful to them. The breadth of extremal methods and systems analysis, suggested by the range of topics covered in these papers, is characteristic of the field and also of the scholarly work of Professor Charnes. Extre mal methods and systems analysis has been a pioneering and systematic approach to the development and application of new scientific theories and methods for problems of management and operations in both the pri vate and public sectors, spanning all major disciplines from economics to engineering.

When von Neumann's and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior appeared in 1944, one thought that a complete theory of strategic social behavior had appeared out of nowhere. However, game theory has, to this very day, remained a fast-growing assemblage of models which have gradually been united in a new social theory - a theory that is far from being completed even after recent advances in game theory, as evidenced by the work of the three Nobel Prize winners, John F. Nash, John C. Harsanyi, and Reinhard Selten. Two of them, Harsanyi and Selten, have contributed important articles to the present volume. This book leaves no doubt that the game-theoretical models are on the right track to becoming a respectable new theory, just like the great theories of the twentieth century originated from formerly separate models which merged in the course of decades. For social scientists, the age of great discover ies is not over. The recent advances of today's game theory surpass by far the results of traditional game theory. For example, modem game theory has a new empirical and social foundation, namely, societal experiences; this has changed its methods, its "rationality. " Morgenstern (I worked together with him for four years) dreamed of an encompassing theory of social behavior. With the inclusion of the concept of evolution in mathematical form, this dream will become true. Perhaps the new foundation will even lead to a new name, "conflict theory" instead of "game theory.

Groups of people perform acts that are subject to standards of rationality. A committee may sensibly award fellowships, or may irrationally award them in violation of its own policies. A theory of collective rationality defines collective acts that are evaluable for rationality and formulates principles for their evaluation. This book argues that a group's act is evaluable for rationality if it is the products of acts its members fully control. It also argues that such an act is collectively rational if the acts of the group's members are rational. Efficiency is a goal of collective rationality, but not a requirement, except in cases where conditions are ideal for joint action and agents have rationally prepared for joint action. The people engaged in a game of strategy form a group, and the combination of their acts yields a collective act. If their collective act is rational, it constitutes a solution to their game. A theory of collective rationality yields principles concerning solutions to games. One principle requires that a solution constitute an equilibrium among the incentives of the agents in the game. In a cooperative game some agents are coalitions of individuals, and it may be impossible for all agents to pursue all incentives. Because rationality is attainable, the appropriate equilibrium standard for cooperative games requires that agents pursue only incentives that provide sufficient reasons to act. The book's theory of collective rationality supports an attainable equilibrium-standard for solutions to cooperative games and shows that its realization follows from individuals' rational acts. By extending the theory of rationality to groups, this book reveals the characteristics that make an act evaluable for rationality and the way rationality's evaluation of an act responds to the type of control its agent exercises over the act. The book's theory of collective rationality contributes to philosophical projects such as contractarian ethics and to practical projects such as the design of social institutions.

This book grew out of a set of lecture notes for a one semester course on dynamic game theory held at the University of Technology, Vienna. It is intended primarily at the graduate level for students in operations research, management science, applied mathematics, and eco nomics. I hope that I have been able to give the reader an accessible introduction to the subject of nonzero-sum dif ferential games with particular emphasis on applications. It would be irrational to try to re ach total com prehensiveness in a single volume. Therefore, I have resisted the temptation to "over-cannibalize" previous textbooks and monographs on the subject. It has rather been my desire to cover material that (I think) is impor tant and interesting, but gets left out of these publications. Writing a book is quite a game. In the beginning -before c10sing the binding agreement* with Plenum-I believed this to be a fi·nite horizon game. Time, however, * Key words will be explained in the text. 7 PREFACE 8 was a merciless arbiter. I am grateful to the Senior Editor, Dr. Ken Derharn, for allowing manuscript delivery to become a (restricted) free terminal time problem. Most of all, I thank my wife Grace for offering me the needed spiritual support, and my two-year-old daughter Sabrina for ignoring the paradoxical situation that there are games which prevent Dad from playing with her.