Readings in Games and Information, 14 April 2006

The main Readings in Games and Information page is http://www.rasmusen.org/GI/reader/gireader.htm.
• PREFACE

• PART 1: THE RULES OF THE GAME
  • Section Preface

  • 1. Philip Straffin, ``The Prisoner's Dilemma,'' UMAP Journal. 1: 101-103 (1980).

  • 2. Albert Tucker, ``A Two-Person Dilemma,'' unpublished notes (May 1950).

  • 3. John Nash, ``Equilibrium Points in n-Person Games,'' Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. 36: 48-49 (January 1950).
    Notes on the article

  • 4. John Nash, ``Non-Cooperative Games,'' Annals of Mathematics, 54: 286-295 (September 1951).

  • 5."To Ensure High Prices, Some Haulers Have Been Known to Break the Rules," Jeff Bailey, Wall Street Journal, p. A6 (8 November 1993).

  • 6. "Cash Flow: 'Pay to Play' is Banned, but Muni-Bond Firms Keep the Game Going," Charles Gasparino and Josh Hamilton, Wall Street Journal, p. A1 (13 May 1998).

  • 7. Sylvia Nasar, "School of Genius (Princeton, Fall 1948)," pp. 58-65 of A Beautiful Mind, New York: Simon and Schuster (1998).

  • 8.Cartoon: Ratbert the Consultant. Dilbert, United Features Syndicate, (1997).

• PART 2: INFORMATION
  • Section Preface

  • 9. Ian Ayres and Jeremy Bulow, ``The Donation Booth,'' The Boston Review , pp. 26-27 (December-January 1998) in html.

  • 10. Livy, the story of the Horatii and the Curiatii from Book 1, Chapters 23, 24, and 25, in ascii, *.txt

  • 11. Michael Rothkopf, ``TREES-- A Decisionmaker's Lament,'' Operations Research, 28: 3 (January/February 1980).

  • 12. Judith Lachman, ``Knowing and Showing Economics and Law, '' (A review of An Introduction to Law and Economics, A. Mitchell Polinsky (1983)) Yale Law Journal, 93: 1587, 1598-1605 (July 1984). Also in tex.
    Notes on the Lachman article

  • 13. Cartoon: "All Those in Favor, Say 'Aye'," The New Yorker Book of Business Cartoons, edited by Robert Mankoff, Princeton: Bloomberg Press, 1998.

• PART 3: MIXED STRATEGIES
  • Section Preface

  • 14. John McDonald and John Tukey (1949) ``Colonel Blotto: A Problem of Military Strategy,'' Fortune, p. 102 (June 1949).

  • 15. ``Dutch Accountants Take on a Formidable Task: Ferreting Out `Cheaters' in the Ranks of OPEC,'' Wall Street Journal, Paul Hemp, p. 1 (26 February 1985).

  • 16. "Shipping Price-Fixing Pacts Hurt Consumers, Critics Say,'' Wall Street Journal, Anna Mathews, p. A1 (7 October 1997).

  • 17.George Stigler, ``The Conference Handbook,'' Journal of Political Economy, 85: 441-443 (April 1977).

  • 18.Cartoon: "Very Guilty", Herman Unger, Universal Press Syndicate, (1988).

• PART 4: DYNAMIC GAMES
  • Section Preface

  • 19. Ernst Zermelo, ``On An Application of Set Theory to the Game of Chess, '' Proceedings, Fifth International Congress of Mathematicians. 2: 501-504 (1913). Translated by Ulrich Schwalbe and Paul Walker, in ``Zermelo and the Early History of Game Theory,'' forthcoming, Games and Economic Behavior.
    Notes on the Zermelo article

  • 20. Thomas Schelling, pp. 119-150 of Chapter 5 of The Strategy of Conflict, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press (1960).

  • 21. Martin Shubik (1954) ``Does the Fittest Necessarily Survive, '' pp. 43- 46 of Readings in Game Theory and Political Behavior , edited by Martin Shubik, Doubleday: Garden City, New York (1954).

  • 22."Shooting the Bird's Eye," pp. 18-19 of The Five Sons of King Pandu: The Story of the Mahabharata , adapted from the Kisari Ganguli translation by Elizabeth Seeger, New York: William R. Scott (1967).

  • 23. Cartoon: ``That's It? That's Peer Review?'' S. Harris.

• PART 5: REPEATED GAMES
  • Section Preface

  • 24. Robert Axelrod & William Hamilton, ``The Evolution of Cooperation,'' Science, 211:1390-1396 (March 1981).

  • 25. "This Tax Amnesty Will Only Work Once," Wall Street Journal, Robert Barro, p. 1 (7 August 1986).

  • 26. "Fare Warning: How Airlines Trade Price Plans,'' Asra Nomani, Wall Street Journal, p. B1 (9 October 1990).

  • 27. Harry Roberts and Roman Weil, " Starting Research Early,'' University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (August 14, 1970), in html.

  • 28. Cartoon: ``Einstein Discovers that Time is Actually Money, '' Gary Larson.

  PART 6: DYNAMIC GAMES WITH INCOMPLETE INFORMATION
  • Section Preface

  • 29. David Kreps, Paul Milgrom, John Roberts, and Robert Wilson, "Rational Cooperation in the Finitely Repeated Prisoners' Dilemma," Journal of Economic Theory, 27: 245-252 (1982).

  • 30. Joseph Farrell, ``Cheap Talk, Coordination, and Entry,'' RAND Journal of Economics, 18: 34-39 (Spring 1987).
    Notes on the Farrell article

  • 31. Nicholas Pileggi, Wise Guy:Life in a Mafia Family, pp. 267-269, New York: Simon and Schuster (1985).

  • 32. Cartoon: "Say, I think I see where we went off..." New Yorker.

  PART 7: MORAL HAZARD
  • Section Preface

  • 33. Joseph Farrell, ``Monopoly Slack and Competitive Rigor: A Simple Model,'' MIT mimeo. (February 1983) in ascii-latex and *.pdf. Original pages: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (each a 60K or so graphics file).

  • 34. Ariel Rubinstein, ``An Optimal Conviction Expectation Regime for Offenses that May Have Been Committed by Accident,'' in Applied Game Theory, 406-413, Wurzburg: Physica-Verlag (1979)
    Notes on the Rubinstein article

  • 35.``Bonded Worker Is No Guarantee of a Perfect Job,'' Wall Street Journal , Teri Agins, p. 1 (30 September 1985).

  • 36. Cartoon: "Look, Ted! We get paid the same as you but all we're doing is standing around and flicking our fingers." Dilbert, Scott Adams.

• PART 8: FURTHER TOPICS IN MORAL HAZARD
  • Section Preface

  • 37. Adam Smith, excerpt from "Of Wages and Profit in the Different Employments of Labour and Stock" from Wealth of Nations, in ascii *.txt

  • 38. "Examples of Plea Bargains". Excerpted from Eric Rasmusen, "Mezzanatto and the Economics of Self Incrimination," Cardozo Law Review, 19: 1541-1584 (May 1998). Also in tex.

  • 39. "Unions Say Auto Firms Use Interplant Rivalry to Raise Work Quotas," Wall Street Journal, Dale Buss, p. 1 (8 November 1983).

  • 40. Cartoon: "Dilbert, I want you to manage Wally's project while he's on vacation in Aruba," Dilbert, Scott Adams.

• PART 9: ADVERSE SELECTION
  • Section Preface

  • 41. George Akerlof, ``The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism,'' Quarterly Journal of Economics, 84: 488-500 (August 1970).

  • 42."Walter Bagehot" (pseudonym for Jack Treynor), ``The Only Game in Town, '' Financial Analysts Journal, 27: 12-14,22 (March/April 1971).

  • 43. ``Are Advertisers Ready to Pay Their Viewers?'' Wall Street Journal, Bart Ziegler, p. B1 (14 November 1996). Here is the Cybergold site where you can get paid for reading ads.

  • 44. Philip Davis, Reuben Hersh & Elena Marchisotto,"The Creation of New Mathematics: An Application of the Lakatos Heuristic," pp. 291-298 of The Mathematical Experience, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin (1981).
    Notes on the Davis et al. article

  • 45. Cartoon: "Frank's Neurosurgery," Gary Larson, The Far Side.

• PART 10: MECHANISM DESIGN IN ADVERSE SELECTION AND MORAL HAZARD WITH HIDDEN INFORMATION
  • Section Preface

  • 46. Jacob Gonik, ``Tie Salesmen's Bonuses to their Forecasts, '' Harvard Business Review, 56: 116-123 (May/June 1978).

  • 47. ``Car-Buying Services Can Save Money, Especially for Those Who Hate Haggling, '' Wall Street Journal , Melinda Guiles, p. 1 (23 April 1985).

  • 48. Hal Varian, "How to Build an Economic Model in Your Spare Time," From Passion and Craft: Economists at Work, edited by Michael Szenberg, University of Michigan Press (1999).

  • 49. Cartoon: "Of course that's only an estimate..." Hoff, New Yorker.

• PART 11: SIGNALLING
  • Section Preface

  • 50. Kyle Bagwell and Michael Riordan, "High and Declining Prices Signal Product Quality," The American Economic Review. 81: 224-239 (March 1991). (Just pp. 224-232 and 237-239.)
    Notes on the Bagwell-Riordan article

  • 51. John Davis, ``The Argument of an Appeal," from American Bar Association Journal, 26: 895-909 (December 1940).
    Notes on the Davis article

  • 52. Cartoon: "Yes, But the Trouble Is, He Always Wears that Mysterious Smile,..." Hoff, New Yorker.

• PART 12: BARGAINING
  • Section Preface

  • 53. John Nash, ``The Bargaining Problem,'' Econometrica, 18: 155-162 (April 1950).

  • 54. Ariel Rubinstein, ``Perfect Equilibrium in a Bargaining Model,'' Econometrica, 50: 97-109 (January 1982).
    Notes on the article

  • 55. ``UPS Faces More Than $1 Billion A Year in New Labor Expenses: Pact Calls for Substantial Pay Increases, Full-Time Jobs and A Union Pension Plan,'' Wall Street Journal , Douglas A. Blackmon, Martha Brannigan, Glenn Burkins and Laura Jereski, p. A3 (August 20, 1997).

  • 56. Cartoon: ``Whatever Happened to Elegant Solutions?'' S. Harris.

• PART 13: AUCTIONS
  • Section Preface

  • 57. Martin Shubik, ``The Dollar Auction Game: A Paradox in Noncooperative Behavior and Escalation,'' Journal of Conflict Resolution, 15: 109-11 (March 1971).

  • 58. R. Preston McAfee and John McMillan, ``Analyzing the Airwaves Auction,'' Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10:159-170 (Winter 1996).

  • 59. ``At Many Auctions, Illegal Bidding Thrives As a Longtime Practice Among Dealers,'' Wall Street Journal, Meg Cox, p. 1 (19 February 1988).

  • 60. Cartoon: "The next item up for bid is the presidency of the United States...," Rogers,Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1999. United Features Syndicate.

• PART 14. PRICING
  • Section Preface

  • 61. Harold Hotelling, ``Stability in Competition,'' Economic Journal, 39: 41-57 (March 1929).
    Notes on the article

  • 62. Francis Edgeworth, "The Mathematical Economics of Professor Amoroso," Economic Journal, 30: 400-407 (September 1922).
    Notes on the article

  • 63. Avner Shaked, ``Existence and Computation of Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibrium for 3-Firms Location Problem,'' Journal of Industrial Economics, 31: 93-96 (September/December 1982).
    Notes on the article

  • 64. ``Busting a Trust: Electrical Contractors Reel Under Charges That They Rigged Bids,'' Andy Pasztor, Wall Street Journal, p. 1 (29 November 1985).

  • 65. Cartoon: "Isn't it great that we don't get any more pesky calls during dinner asking us to switch long-distance companies?" Rogers,Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 1999. United Features Syndicate.

• PART 15. ENTRY
  • Section Preface

  • 66. Drew Fudenberg & Jean Tirole,"The Fat-Cat Effect, The Puppy- Dog Ploy, and the Lean and Hungry Look,'' American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings, 74: 361-366 (May 1984).
    Notes on the article

  • 67. "Drugs: Novel Heart-Drug Deal Protects Sales, Spurs Suit," Wall Street Journal; By Ralph T. King Jr., p. B1 (21 August 1998).

  • 68. Eric Rasmusen, ``Aphorisms on Writing, Speaking, and Listening,'' in ascii latex, *.tex and *.pdf
    Notes on the article

  • 69. Cartoon: ``Henry and the Candy Shop,'' Carl Anderson, Henry 4-16-.

• The index.

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