The 2 Best Yale Open Courses ECON 159: Game Theory Podcast Episodes
1) Introduction: Five First Lessons
We introduce Game Theory by playing a game. We organize the game into players, their strategies, and their goals or payoffs; and we learn that we should decide what our goals are before we make choice...Show More
2) Lecture 15 - Backward Induction: Chess, Strategies, and Credible Threats
We first discuss Zermelo’s theorem: that games like tic-tac-toe or chess have a solution. That is, either there is a way for player 1 to force a win, or there is a way for player 1 to force a tie, or ...Show More
Lecture 15 - Backward Induction: Chess, Strategies, and Credible Threats
1:12:38 | Jun 6th, 2018
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3) Lecture 24 - Asymmetric Information: Auctions and the Winner's Curse
We discuss auctions. We first distinguish two extremes: common values and private values. We hold a common value auction in class and discover the winner’s curse, the winner tends to overpay. We discu...Show More
4) Lecture 23 - Asymmetric Information: Silence, Signaling and Suffering Education
We look at two settings with asymmetric information; one side of a game knows something that the other side does not. We should always interpret attempts to communicate or signal such information taki...Show More
Lecture 23 - Asymmetric Information: Silence, Signaling and Suffering Education
1:10:36 | Jun 8th, 2018
5) Lecture 22 - Repeated Games: Cheating, Punishment, and Outsourcing
In business or personal relationships, promises and threats of good and bad behavior tomorrow may provide good incentives for good behavior today, but, to work, these promises and threats must be cred...Show More
6) Lecture 21 - Repeated Games: Cooperation vs. the End Game
We discuss repeated games, aiming to unpack the intuition that the promise of rewards and the threat of punishment in the future of a relationship can provide incentives for good behavior today. In cl...Show More
7) Lecture 20 - Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: Wars of Attrition
We first play and then analyze wars of attrition; the games that afflict trench warfare, strikes, and businesses in some competitive settings. We find long and damaging fights can occur in class in th...Show More
8) Lecture 19 - Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: Matchmaking and Strategic Investments
We analyze three games using our new solution concept, subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). The first game involves players’ trusting that others will not make mistakes. It has three Nash equilibria but...Show More
Lecture 19 - Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: Matchmaking and Strategic Investments
1:17:08 | Jun 8th, 2018
9) Lecture 18 - Imperfect Information: Information Sets and Sub-Game Perfection
We consider games that have both simultaneous and sequential components, combining ideas from before and after the midterm. We represent what a player does not know within a game using an information ...Show More
Lecture 18 - Imperfect Information: Information Sets and Sub-Game Perfection
1:15:57 | Jun 8th, 2018
10) Lecture 17 - Backward Induction: Ultimatums and Bargaining
We develop a simple model of bargaining, starting from an ultimatum game (one person makes the other a take it or leave it offer), and building up to alternating offer bargaining (where players can ma...Show More