Introduction to Game Theory

This course is an introduction to game theory. Game theory is a way of thinking about strategic situations, which is when the outcome of one’s choice depends not only on given parameters of the environment (prices, production function, demand curve), but also on choices of other agents. In this course we will develop introduce tools that will help us to approach and analyze strategic situations. We will apply these tools to many different settings including economics, political science, sociology and even evolutionary biology. The course will emphasize examples. We will also play several games in class.

Having some background in micro-economics (introductory level would suffice) is highly recommended. We will use basic calculus in this course (mostly, one variable). We will also refer to ideas like probability and expectation.