Product Description

"Both broad and deep, this book belongs on the shelf of every serious student of game theory."-- David Kreps, Graduate School of Business, Stanford University "Fudenberg and Tirole's text will have an immediate and important impact on the way game theory is taught at the graduate level. Not only does it cover most of the central topics in noncooperative game theory, it is as up-to-date and complete as a book in this area could hope to be." -- Charles Wilson, Professor of Economics, New York University

This text introduces the principles of noncooperative game theory -- including strategic form games, Nash equilibria, extensive-form games, subgame perfection, repeated games, and games of incomplete information -- in a direct and uncomplicated style that will acquaint students with the broad spectrum of the field while highlighting and explaining what they need to know at any given point. The analytic material is accompanied by many applications, examples, and exercises. Although game theory has been applied to many fields, Fudenberg and Tirole focus on the kinds of game theory that have been most useful in the study of economic problems. They also include some applications to political science. Game Theory can be used for a first or second course. It presents subgame perfection and Bayesian games with a minimum of detail with technical subtleties included in the advanced sections and uses markers to indicate the suitability of various sections to different audiences. The book is divided into five parts: static games of complete information, dynamic games of complete information, static games of incomplete information, dynamic games of incomplete information, and advanced topics.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117209 in Books
• Published on: 1991-08-29
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 603 pages

Review


"Fudenberg and Tirole's text will have an immediate and important impact on the way game theory is taught at the graduate level. Not only does it cover most of the central topics in noncooperative game theory, it is as up-to-date and complete as a book in this area could hope to be."
—Charles Wilson, Professor of Economics, New York University

About the Author
Drew Fudenberg is Professor in the Economics Department at Harvard University. Jean Tirole is Directeur de recherche, Groupe de Recherche en Economie Mathématique et Quantitative at the Université des Sciences Sociales de Toulouse.

Customer Reviews

Canonical game theory reference text
This is a definitive reference text. It is not a self-study course in game theory, nor even a useful introduction. It functions best as a brush-up source, or a reference on equilibrium refinements, for those who already know the basics, and can work with a fairly technical presentation. It's very good especially on screening games and Bayesian-type information games.

For a more intuitive introduction to game theory, try a short little book by David Kreps called "Game Theory and Economic Modeling.".

for a big book , it could be better
The book does a pretty good job of covering Bayesian issues, but one would think that a big book would be better organized and would cover more topics.

I found it difficult to master the issues of equilibrium refinement and of mechanism design using this book and had to turn to outside sources at the time. Many of the problems would be helped by more "mechanical" examples on how to solve them, since the tools needed to solve many of these problems are probably new to a lot of students. The Tirole IO book contains some solved problems...I wish this book did, too.

Overall, it is a fine book...more than adequate. But it could be better.

Comprehensive and very well written
The theory of games is now pervasive in the fields of economics, financial modeling, logistics, operations research, network engineering, and population biology. As such a background in game theory is an absolute necessity if one is to deal with problems in these areas. This book is an advanced treatment of game theory, and presupposes the reader already has had some exposure to the subject. There is an excellent set of exercises at the end of each chapter, and so the book can be used as a textbook or for self-study.

After an elementary example of a game in the introduction to motivate the subject, the authors begin in Part I of the book with the subject of static games with complete information. Strategic-form games are defined, along with dominated strategies, and the important concept of Nash equilibrium, the latter being introduced to deal with games that are not solvable by iterated strict dominance. For those with a background in elementary functional analysis, the authors prove that finite strategic-form game has a mixed-strategy equilibrium and prove that the Nash-Equilibrium has a closed graph. The concept of Nash equilibrium is extended to the concept of a correlated equilibrium, wherein each player can send another a private signal before they choose their strategy.

In Part II, the authors discuss dynamic games with complete information. Examples of these kinds of games include a sequential version of the battle of the sexes game, and a sequential version of matching pennies. The authors discuss subgame-perfect equilibria, wherein an n-tuple of strategies constitute Nash equilibria in every subgame. The Stackelberg model of duopoly is discussed along with the repeated Prisoner"s dilemna, the latter being an example of backward induction in finitely repeated games. A kind of generalization of the principle of optimality in dynamic programming is used to analyze perfect public equilibria via a tool called self-generation.

In Part III of the book, the authors discuss static games of incomplete information. Examples are discussed including Bayesian games, where at least one player is uncertain about another player"s payoff function, and first-price and second-price auctions. In first-price auctions, each player submits a sealed bid and the one with the highest bid obtains the item; in second-price auctions each player submits a sealed bid but the player submitting the highest bid gets to purchase the item for a cost given by the player with the second highest bid. The authors explain in detail the dominant strategies for these types of auctions. Bargaining with two-sided incomplete information is discussed and the optimal amount of trade is found from the linear equilibrium of the Chatterjee-Samuelson double action.

In Part IV, dynamic games of incomplete information are discussed by the authors. Examples that they discuss include signaling games such as the two-period reputation game, and Spence"s education game. Signaling is widely used by firms and organizations in spite of it being somewhat costly to do so. For example a public company may be trying to convince investors that it represents high returns. The authors show how to obtain sequential perfect Bayes equilibrium in these and other scenarios. The authors also discuss reputation effects in games, with an example being the chain-store game. The general case of single long-run players with reputation effects is treated in detail. Bargaining with sequential buyers is also discussed with examples given for one-sided asymmetric information and mechanism design.

The last part of the book discussed miscellaneous topics in game theory, including strategic stability, more discussion on signaling, finite strategic-form games, and supermodular games. The treatment is more complicated mathematically with emphasis on proving existence theorems for Nash equilibria and pure-strategy equilibria. The notion of a Markov perfect equilibrium is employed to discuss situations where the past has a direct influence on current opportunities. This brings in the fascinating subject of stochastic games, wherein current payoffs depend on the state of the game and on current actions, with the state evolving according to a Markov process. These are generalized to continuous time, leading to the famous differential games. Game theory under "common knowledge" is also discussed, with examples given of the "dirty face" games.

Some omissions in the book, which would have of course increased the size of the book substantially, include mathematical modeling of poker and other card games. These are complicated games in which to analyze, but they have taken on considerable importance in the casino industry in recent years.