The chapters in this volume explore how various methods from game theory can be utilized to optimize security and risk-management strategies. Emphasizing the importance of connecting theory and practice, they detail the steps involved in selecting, adapting, and analyzing game-theoretic models in security engineering and provide case studies of successful implementations in different application domains. Practitioners who are not experts in game theory and are uncertain about incorporating it into their work will benefit from this resource, as well as researchers in applied mathematics and computer science interested in current developments and future directions. The first part of the book presents the theoretical basics, covering various different game-theoretic models related to and suitable for security engineering. The second part then shows how these models are adopted, implemented, and analyzed. Surveillance systems, interconnected networks, and power grids are among the different application areas discussed. Finally, in the third part, case studies from business and industry of successful applications of game-theoretic models are presented, and the range of applications discussed is expanded to include such areas as cloud computing, Internet of Things, and water utility networks.

In everyday life we must often reach decisions while knowing that the outcome will not only depend on our own choice, but also on the choices of others. These situations are the focus of epistemic game theory. Unlike classical game theory, it explores how people may reason about their opponents before they make their final choice in a game. Packed with examples and practical problems based on stories from everyday life, this is the first textbook to explain the principles of epistemic game theory. Each chapter is dedicated to one particular, natural way of reasoning. The book then shows how each of these ways of reasoning will affect the final choices that can rationally be made and how these choices can be found by iterative procedures. Moreover, it does so in a way that uses elementary mathematics and does not presuppose any previous knowledge of game theory.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics is a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the state of the art in the philosophy of physics. It comprisess 54 self-contained chapters written by leading philosophers of physics at both senior and junior levels, making it the most thorough and detailed volume of its type on the market - nearly every major perspective in the field is represented. The Companion's 54 chapters are organized into 12 parts. The first seven parts cover all of the major physical theories investigated by philosophers of physics today, and the last five explore key themes that unite the study of these theories. I. Newtonian Mechanics II. Special Relativity III. General Relativity IV. Non-Relativistic Quantum Theory V. Quantum Field Theory VI. Quantum Gravity VII. Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics VIII. Explanation IX. Intertheoretic Relations X. Symmetries XI. Metaphysics XII. Cosmology The difficulty level of the chapters has been carefully pitched so as to offer both accessible summaries for those new to philosophy of physics and standard reference points for active researchers on the front lines. An introductory chapter by the editors maps out the field, and each part also begins with a short summary that places the individual chapters in context. The volume will be indispensable to any serious student or scholar of philosophy of physics.

* A valuable teaching resource, replete with exercises, for any course of gambling mathematics * Suitable for a wide audience of professionals, researchers and students * Many practical applications for the gambling industry

As for film and literature, the horror genre has been very popular in the video game. The World of Scary Video Games provides a comprehensive overview of the videoludic horror, dealing with the games labelled as "survival horror" as well as the mainstream and independent works associated with the genre. It examines the ways in which video games have elicited horror, terror and fear since Haunted House (1981). Bernard Perron combines an historical account with a theoretical approach in order to offer a broad history of the genre, outline its formal singularities and explore its principal issues. It studies the most important games and game series, from Haunted House (1981) to Alone in the Dark (1992- ), Resident Evil (1996-present), Silent Hill (1999-present), Fatal Frame (2001-present), Dead Space (2008-2013), Amnesia: the Dark Descent (2010), and The Evil Within (2014). Accessibly written, The World of Scary Video Games helps the reader to trace the history of an important genre of the video game.

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.

This book studies R. Buckminster Fuller's World Game and similar world games, past and present. Proposed by Fuller in 1964 and first played in colleges and universities across North America at a time of growing ecological crisis, the World Game attempted to turn data analysis, systems modelling, scenario building, computer technology, and information design to more egalitarian ends to meet human needs. It challenged players to redistribute finite planetary resources more equitably, to 'make the world work'. Criticised and lauded in equal measure, the World Game has evolved through several formats and continues today in correspondence with debates on planetary stewardship, gamification, data management, and the democratic deficit. This book looks again at how the World Game has been played, focusing on its architecture, design, and gameplay. With hindsight, the World Game might appear naive, utopian, or technocratic, but we share its problems, if not necessarily its solutions. Such a study will be of interest to scholars working in art history, design history, game studies, media studies, architecture, and the environmental humanities.

Winner of the 2017 De Groot Prize awarded by the International Society for Bayesian Analysis (ISBA) A relatively new area of research, adversarial risk analysis (ARA) informs decision making when there are intelligent opponents and uncertain outcomes. Adversarial Risk Analysis develops methods for allocating defensive or offensive resources against intelligent adversaries. Many examples throughout illustrate the application of the ARA approach to a variety of games and strategic situations. Focuses on the recent subfield of decision analysis, ARA Compares ideas from decision theory and game theory Uses multi-agent influence diagrams (MAIDs) throughout to help readers visualize complex information structures Applies the ARA approach to simultaneous games, auctions, sequential games, and defend-attack games Contains an extended case study based on a real application in railway security, which provides a blueprint for how to perform ARA in similar security situations Includes exercises at the end of most chapters, with selected solutions at the back of the book The book shows decision makers how to build Bayesian models for the strategic calculation of their opponents, enabling decision makers to maximize their expected utility or minimize their expected loss. This new approach to risk analysis asserts that analysts should use Bayesian thinking to describe their beliefs about an opponent's goals, resources, optimism, and type of strategic calculation, such as minimax and level-k thinking. Within that framework, analysts then solve the problem from the perspective of the opponent while placing subjective probability distributions on all unknown quantities. This produces a distribution over the actions of the opponent and enables analysts to maximize their expected utilities.

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.