Game theory is the formal toolkit for analyzing situations in which payoffs depend not only on your actions (say, watching a baseball game), but also others' (e.g., whether you meet your friends at the game). In this course, you'll learn how to solve one-shot and repeated games using tools like Nash equilibrium, subgame perfection, Bayesian Nash equilibrium, and the one-off deviation principle. We'll apply these insights to human social behavior?examining why people are altruistic, where our sense of social norms come from, and more. Along the way, discussion will leverage empirical data from lab and field experiments about how people actually behave. Thus, one of our objectives is to become familiar with experimental economics as well. Prerequisite: Econ 4011.
Course Attributes: AS SSC; BU BA
