This book surveys the state-of-the-art in the theory of combinatorial games, that is games not involving chance or hidden information. Enthusiasts will find a wide variety of exciting topics, from a trailblazing presentation of scoring to solutions of three piece ending positions of bidding chess. Theories and techniques in many subfields are covered, such as universality, Wythoff Nim variations, misere play, partizan bidding (a.k.a. Richman games), loopy games, and the algebra of placement games. Also included are an updated list of unsolved problems, extremely efficient algorithms for taking and breaking games, a historical exposition of binary numbers and games by David Singmaster, chromatic Nim variations, renormalization for combinatorial games, and a survey of temperature theory by Elwyn Berlekamp, one of the founders of the field. The volume was initiated at the Combinatorial Game Theory Workshop, January 2011, held at the Banff International Research Station.

In a series of conversational essays, this textbook discusses the manner in which economic thought addresses a broad array of everyday issues beyond classical textbook treatments. In the spirit of popular economics books, the author uncovers economic issues and solutions from individuals, businesses, society, and the country as a whole in a decidedly non-technical and relatable manner. Should the federal government mandate use of child safety seats on commercial airlines? Can genetic information substitute for a college degree? The contents of this book touch on many of these contemporary topics in an accessible way. Addressing undergraduate and graduate students, as well as scholars in different fields of economics, this book is a must-read for everybody interested in a better understanding of economic thought.

This work presents recent mathematical methods in the area of optimal control with a particular emphasis on the computational aspects and applications. Optimal control theory concerns the determination of control strategies for complex dynamical systems, in order to optimize some measure of their performance. Started in the 60's under the pressure of the "space race" between the US and the former USSR, the field now has a far wider scope, and embraces a variety of areas ranging from process control to traffic flow optimization, renewable resources exploitation and management of financial markets. These emerging applications require more and more efficient numerical methods for their solution, a very difficult task due the huge number of variables. The chapters of this volume give an up-to-date presentation of several recent methods in this area including fast dynamic programming algorithms, model predictive control and max-plus techniques. This book is addressed to researchers, graduate students and applied scientists working in the area of control problems, differential games and their applications.

This book details cutting-edge research into human-like driving technology, utilising game theory to better suit a human and machine hybrid driving environment. Covering feature identification and modelling of human driving behaviours, the book explains how to design an algorithm for decision making and control of autonomous vehicles in complex scenarios. Beginning with a review of current research in the field, the book uses this as a springboard from which to present a new theory of human-like driving framework for autonomous vehicles. Chapters cover system models of decision making and control, driving safety, riding comfort and travel efficiency. Throughout the book, game theory is applied to human-like decision making, enabling the autonomous vehicle and the human driver interaction to be modelled using noncooperative game theory approach. It also uses game theory to model collaborative decision making between connected autonomous vehicles. This framework enables human-like decision making and control of autonomous vehicles, which leads to safer and more efficient driving in complicated traffic scenarios. The book will be of interest to students and professionals alike, in the field of automotive engineering, computer engineering and control engineering.

This Palgrave Pivot uses a simple model from game theory to explain the behavior of countries disputing ownership of resources and of small islands in the South China Sea. It argues that the rapid transformation of the region's economy - the rise of Factory Asia - is not being acknowledged, leading countries to take chances beyond what a rational picture of costs and benefits would suggest. Regional economic cooperation may be a viable alternative to the present conflicts. However, the varied experience of regional initiatives in Southeast Asia provides a cautionary note that, while there is the potential for peaceful development of the South China Sea, there are significant challenges to structuring successful programs.

This book examines how China's decentralization process has affected and will affect the country's macroeconomic performance and the functioning of the market. With an innovative application of game theory, the author develops an analytical framework that can explain the behaviour of the central and local governments under alternative institutional environments. The study also suggests how to establish desirable rules of games in China's political and economic institutions through appropriate reforms.

The first volume, Geometry, Language and Strategy, extended the concepts of Game Theory, replacing static equilibrium with a deterministic dynamic theory. The first volume opened up many applications that were only briefly touched on. To study the consequences of the deterministic approach in contrast to standard Bayesian approaches, the richness of applications, requires an engineering foundation and discipline, which this volume supplies. It provides a richer list of applications, such as the Prisoner's Dilemma, which extends the resonant behavior of Vol. 1 to more general time-dependent and transient behaviors.

This book develops a detailed, disaggregated theoretical and empirical framework that explains variations in mass killing by authoritarian regimes globally, with a specific focus on Pakistan, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Using a combination of game-theoretic, statistical, and qualitative approaches, this project explicates when civilians within nondemocratic states will mobilize against the ruling elite, and when such mobilization will result in mass killing. In doing so, it illustrates the important role urbanization and food insecurity historically played, and will continue to play, in generating extreme forms of civilian victimization.

There are thousands of books relating to poker, blackjack, roulette and baccarat, including strategy guides, statistical analysis, psychological studies, and much more. However, there are no books on Pell, Rouleno, Street Dice, and many other games that have had a short life in casinos! While this is understandable - most casino gamblers have not heard of these games, and no one is currently playing them - their absence from published works means that some interesting mathematics and gaming history are at risk of being lost forever. Table games other than baccarat, blackjack, craps, and roulette are called carnival games, as a nod to their origin in actual traveling or seasonal carnivals. Mathematics of Casino Carnival Games is a focused look at these games and the mathematics at their foundation. Features * Exercises, with solutions, are included for readers who wish to practice the ideas presented * Suitable for a general audience with an interest in the mathematics of gambling and games * Goes beyond providing practical 'tips' for gamblers, and explores the mathematical principles that underpin gambling games

This book addresses the perennial question of how to promote Africa's indigenous languages as medium of instruction in educational systems. Breaking with the traditional approach to the continent's language question by focusing on the often overlooked issue of the link between African languages and economic development, Language Policy and Economics argues that African languages are an integral part of a nation's socio-political and economic development. Therefore, the book argues that any language policy designed to promote these languages in such higher domains as the educational system in particular must have economic advantages if the intent is to succeed, and proposes Prestige Planning as the way to address this issue. The proposition is a welcome break away from language policies which pay lip-service to the empowerment of African languages while, by default, strengthening the stranglehold of imported European languages.

With annual gross sales surpassing 100 billion U.S. dollars each of the last two years, the digital games industry may one day challenge theatrical-release movies as the highest-grossing entertainment media in the world. In their examination of the tremendous cultural influence of digital games, Daniel Reardon and David Wright analyze three companies that have shaped the industry: Bethesda, located in Rockville, Maryland, USA; BioWare in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada; and CD Projekt Red in Warsaw, Poland. Each company has used social media and technical content in the games to promote players' belief that players control the companies' game narratives. The result has been at times explosive, as empowered players often attempted to co-op the creative processes of games through discussion board forum demands, fund-raising campaigns to persuade companies to change or add game content, and modifications ("modding") of the games through fan-created downloads. The result has changed the way we understand the interactive nature of digital games and the power of fan culture to shape those games.

The book presents new developments in the dynamic modeling and optimization methods in environmental economics and provides a huge range of applications dealing with the economics of natural resources, the impacts of climate change and of environmental pollution, and respective policy measures. The interrelationship between economic activities and environmental quality, the development of cleaner technologies, the switch from fossil to renewable resources and the proper use of policy instruments play an important role along the path towards a sustainable future. Biological, physical and economic processes are naturally involved in the subject, and postulate the main modelling, simulation and decision-making tools: the methods of dynamic optimization and dynamic games.

Differential Game Theory with Applications to Missiles and Autonomous Systems explains the use of differential game theory in autonomous guidance and control systems. The book begins with an introduction to the basic principles before considering optimum control and game theory. Two-party and multi-party game theory and guidance are then covered and, finally, the theory is demonstrated through simulation examples and models and the simulation results are discussed. Recent developments in the area of guidance and autonomous systems are also presented. Key features: * Presents new developments and how they relate to established control systems knowledge. * Demonstrates the theory through simulation examples and models. * Covers two-party and multi-party game theory and guidance. * Accompanied by a website hosting MATLAB(R) code. The book is essential reading for researchers and practitioners in the aerospace and defence industries as well as graduate students in aerospace engineering.

Casino games and traditional card games have rich and idiosyncratic histories, complex subcultures and player practices, and facilitate the flow of billions of dollars each year through casinos and card rooms, and between professional players and amateurs. They have nevertheless been overlooked by game scholars due to the negative ethical weight of “gambling” – with such games pathologized and labelled as deviance or mental illness, few look beyond to unpick the games, their players, and their communities. The Casino, Card and Betting Game Reader offers 25 chapters studying the communities playing these games, the distinctive cultures and practices that have emerged around them, their activities and beliefs and interpersonal relationships, and how these games influence – both positively and negatively – the lives and careers of millions of game players around the world. It is the first of a new series of edited collections, Play Beyond the Computer, dedicated to exploring the play of games beyond computers and games consoles.

Congruences are ubiquitous in computer science, engineering, mathematics, and related areas. Developing techniques for finding (the number of) solutions of congruences is an important problem. But there are many scenarios in which we are interested in only a subset of the solutions; in other words, there are some restrictions. What do we know about these restricted congruences, their solutions, and applications? This book introduces the tools that are needed when working on restricted congruences and then systematically studies a variety of restricted congruences. Restricted Congruences in Computing defines several types of restricted congruence, obtains explicit formulae for the number of their solutions using a wide range of tools and techniques, and discusses their applications in cryptography, information security, information theory, coding theory, string theory, quantum field theory, parallel computing, artificial intelligence, computational biology, discrete mathematics, number theory, and more. This is the first book devoted to restricted congruences and their applications. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers across computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics.

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only a threat to our health and economy, but also has strong implications for defence and security. Indeed, defence leaders have highlighted a second fight surrounding the spread of COVID-19, namely disinformation and preparing to face adversaries willing to exploit the public health crisis for nefarious purposes. The current pandemic is a breeding ground for the propagation of disinformation, as it represents the first major global health event in which large social media platforms have become the main distributor of information. This multi-national edited volume consists of contributions from Defence Science, academia and industry, including NATO Headquarters, United States, Netherlands, Singapore, United Kingdom and Norway. The content is aimed at a diverse audience, including NATO members, researchers from defence and security organizations, academics, and militaries including analysts and practitioners, as well as policy makers. This volume focuses on various aspects of COVID-19 disinformation, including identifying global dominant disinformation narratives and the methods used to spread disinformation, examining COVID-19 disinformation within the broader context of the cognitive domain, examining the psychological effects of COVID-19 disinformation and COVID-19 disinformation on instant messaging platforms, along with examining various countermeasures to disinformation.

This book, published in honor of Professor Laurent Praly on the occasion of his 65th birthday, explores the responses of some leading international authorities to new challenges in nonlinear and adaptive control. The mitigation of the effects of uncertainty and nonlinearity - ubiquitous features of real-world engineering and natural systems - on closed-loop stability and robustness being of crucial importance, the contributions report the latest research into overcoming these difficulties in: autonomous systems; reset control systems; multiple-input-multiple-output nonlinear systems; input delays; partial differential equations; population games; and data-driven control. Trends in Nonlinear and Adaptive Control presents research inspired by and related to Professor Praly's lifetime of contributions to control theory and is a valuable addition to the literature of advanced control.

This book offers the first systematic analysis of economic thought concerning war. It retraces debates on war from the formation of European states, the rise of Mercantilism, to Colonialism, Imperialism, the World Wars and the Cold War. Allio shows different economic perspectives from which it is possible to study war as a tool to achieve economic ends: causes, consequences, costs, funding methods, and effects on the economic status of the state and on the well-being of citizens. Examining interpretations from Smith, Hobson, Keynes, Kalecki, Stiglitz and many more, this important volume addresses the economic implications of war from the perspectives of many who bore the costs of wars in reality.

Game theory involves multi-person decision making and differential dynamic game theory has been widely applied to n-person decision making problems, which are stimulated by a vast number of applications. This book addresses the gap to discuss general stochastic n-person noncooperative and cooperative game theory with wide applications to control systems, signal processing systems, communication systems, managements, financial systems, and biological systems. H8 game strategy, n-person cooperative and noncooperative game strategy are discussed for linear and nonlinear stochastic systems along with some computational algorithms developed to efficiently solve these game strategies.

The starting point for this monograph is the previously unknown connection between the Continuum Hypothesis and the saturation of the non-stationary ideal on 1; and the principle result of this monograph is the identification of a canonical model in which the Continuum Hypothesis is false. This is the first example of such a model and moreover the model can be characterized in terms of maximality principles concerning the universal-existential theory of all sets of countable ordinals. This model is arguably the long sought goal of the study of forcing axioms and iterated forcing but is obtained by completely different methods, for example no theory of iterated forcing whatsoever is required. The construction of the model reveals a powerful technique for obtaining independence results regarding the combinatorics of the continuum, yielding a number of results which have yet to be obtained by any other method. This monograph is directed to researchers and advanced graduate students in Set Theory. The second edition is updated to take into account some of the developments in the decade since the first edition appeared, this includes a revised discussion of -logic and related matters.

This important three volume set is a collection of key writings on game theory published before 1963. It makes many frequently-cited and historically important articles conveniently available to a wider audience. The collection includes comprehensive coverage of the game theoretical writings of von Neumann, Nash and Wald. The editors have written a succinct introduction to accompany the articles.

This book provides a systematic and accessible approach to stochastic differential equations, backward stochastic differential equations, and their connection with partial differential equations, as well as the recent development of the fully nonlinear theory, including nonlinear expectation, second order backward stochastic differential equations, and path dependent partial differential equations. Their main applications and numerical algorithms, as well as many exercises, are included. The book focuses on ideas and clarity, with most results having been solved from scratch and most theories being motivated from applications. It can be considered a starting point for junior researchers in the field, and can serve as a textbook for a two-semester graduate course in probability theory and stochastic analysis. It is also accessible for graduate students majoring in financial engineering.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPP or 3Ps) allow the public sector to seek alternative funding and expertise from the private sector during procurement processes. Such partnerships, if executed with due diligence, often benefit the public immensely. Unfortunately, Public-Private Partnerships can be vulnerable to corruption. This book looks at what measures we can put in place to check corruption during procurement and what good governance strategies the public sector can adopt to improve the performance of 3Ps. The book applies mathematical models to analyze 3Ps. It uses game theory to study the interaction and dynamics between the stakeholders and suggests strategies to reduce corruption risks in various 3Ps stages. The authors explain through game theory-based simulation how governments can adopt a evaluating process at the start of each procurement to weed out undesirable private partners and why the government should take a more proactive approach. Using a methodological framework rooted in mathematical models to illustrate how we can combat institutional corruption, this book is a helpful reference for anyone interested in public policymaking and public infrastructure management.

Written by leading scholars from various disciplines, this book presents current research on topics such as public choice, game theory, and political economy. It features contributions on fundamental, methodological, and empirical issues around the concepts of power and responsibility that strive to bridge the gap between different disciplinary approaches. The contributions fall into roughly four sub-disciplines: voting and voting power, public economics and politics, economics and philosophy, as well as labor economics. On the occasion of his 75th birthday, this book is written in honor of Manfred J. Holler, an economist by training and profession whose work as a guiding light has helped advance our understanding of the interdisciplinary connections of concepts of power and responsibility. He has written many articles and books on game theory, and worked extensively on questions of labor economics, politics, and philosophy.

Handbook of the Shapley Value contains 24 chapters and a foreword written by Alvin E. Roth, who was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences jointly with Lloyd Shapley in 2012. The purpose of the book is to highlight a range of relevant insights into the Shapley value. Every chapter has been written to honor Lloyd Shapley, who introduced this fascinating value in 1953. The first chapter, by William Thomson, places the Shapley value in the broader context of the theory of cooperative games, and briefly introduces each of the individual contributions to the volume. This is followed by a further contribution from the editors of the volume, which serves to introduce the more significant features of the Shapley value. The rest of the chapters in the book deal with different theoretical or applied aspects inspired by this interesting value and have been contributed specifically for this volume by leading experts in the area of Game Theory. Chapters 3 through to 10 are more focused on theoretical aspects of the Shapley value, Chapters 11 to 15 are related to both theoretical and applied areas. Finally, from Chapter 16 to Chapter 24, more attention is paid to applications of the Shapley value to different problems encountered across a diverse range of fields. As expressed by William Thomson in the Introduction to the book, "The chapters contribute to the subject in several dimensions: Mathematical foundations; axiomatic foundations; computations; applications to special classes of games; power indices; applications to enriched classes of games; applications to concretely specified allocation problems: an ever-widening range, mapping allocation problems into games or implementation." Nowadays, the Shapley value continues to be as appealing as when it was first introduced in 1953, or perhaps even more so now that its potential is supported by the quantity and quality of the available results. This volume collects a large amount of work that definitively demonstrates that the Shapley value provides answers and solutions to a wide variety of problems.