Game Theory (Coursera)

How could you begin to model keyword auctions, and peer to peer file-sharing networks, without accounting for the incentives of the people using them? The course will provide the basics: representing games and strategies, the extensive form (which computer scientists call game trees), Bayesian games (modeling things like auctions), repeated and stochastic games, and more. We'll include a variety of examples including classic games and a few applications.

Syllabus

WEEK 1
Introduction and Overview
Introduction, overview, uses of game theory, some applications and examples, and formal definitions of: the normal form, payoffs, strategies, pure strategy Nash equilibrium, dominant strategies.

WEEK 2
Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium
pure and mixed strategy Nash equilibria.

WEEK 3
Alternate Solution Concepts
Iterative removal of strictly dominated strategies, minimax strategies and the minimax theorem for zero-sum game, correlated equilibria.

WEEK 4
Extensive-Form Games
Perfect information games: trees, players assigned to nodes, payoffs, backward Induction, subgame perfect equilibrium, introduction to imperfect-information games, mixed versus behavioral strategies.

WEEK 5
Repeated Games
Repeated prisoners dilemma, finite and infinite repeated games, limited-average versus future-discounted reward, folk theorems, stochastic games and learning.

WEEK 6
Bayesian Games
General definitions, ex ante/interim Bayesian Nash equilibrium.

WEEK 7
Coalitional Games
Transferable utility cooperative games, Shapley value, Core, applications.

WEEK 8
Final Exam