Not sure how many would be interested but thought I'd share this. http://academicearth.org/lectures/introduction-to-game-theory Also would like to share another site that I enjoy listening to occasionally. It's a podcast hosted by a professor of economics at George Mason University. http://www.econtalk.org/
I found this site several years ago. I have an 8 gig memory stick in my car radio with 200+ of their podcasts, to makes sure I heard them all, and to repeat the good ones. Russ does a wonderful job making economics available to the general public (in sharp contrast to Reiver). I tried reading a couple of books on Game Theory. The more complicated it got, the more I thought of my son's experience with Texas Holdem. My son didn't want to gamble, so he read a stack of books on how to play. He memorized the probability tables and knew what to do in each situation. He knew was ready. He started playing, and never had a losing night, but soon realized the other people weren't playing by the rules (he was in the cheap seats). Game theory assumes people know the rules.
One thing is for sure, Reiver would certainly object to his more austrian moments. Regardless, he has a diverse guest list and covers a broad spectrum of topics and for someone who doesn't have a tertiary degree in the subject I find it very digestible and informative. If I remember correctly he interviewed Jimmy Wales at one point and their insights on crowd sourcing and emergent order was fascinating and it's been a topic I've clung to since then. As a software developer and a fan of open source technologies such as Java and OpenOffice, I realize the potential of emergent and open process and view them very much like the economy, that realization truly helped me to grasp the subject.
Not necessarily, at least when properly applied. Game theory just assumes that people's actions can be predicted and tend to be consistent. Players that don't understand the rules exist in every game - they just have to be accounted for.
And, Russ's lack of hostitilty. Has anyone exchanged more than 3 post with Reiver without being told they were an idiot - even when they agreed with him? I appreciate Russ's interviews with those he disagrees with, yet lets them have all the time they need to express their views. I remember Russ's difficulty countering Keynes "paradox of thrift". Could you imagine a government regulator being anywhere as capable of detecting buggy software as open source? Not having a software background, I associate the economy with biology and evolution.
I was watching something the other night which had a little on game theory and how when companies that make tobacco products were banned from advertising it actually didn't cause them to lose money because game theory said that their advertising didn't really matter because people had their favourite product and so they were basically just wasting their money on advertising and when they weren't allowed to advertise it was almost like they had free money.
That would apply to add brand name products, not just cigarettes. Cigarettes have the advantage of being addictive. Even then, advertising is to get new customers (to replace the ones that die off).
There is a downside to game theory: its enabled a technical analysis that has partially sidelined economics' ability to integrate behavioural theory from the other social sciences. Shifting away from the folly of the kinked demand curve ain't everything!
For me, it piqued my interest because of it's application to fields other than economics. You know as well as I do though, there is a contingency of experts in economics that would love to see the "soft science" side vanish forever; physics envy. Game theory provides us with yet another lens that economics can be viewed through.
