There is a widening gap between the current organizational reality and the tools and methods available to managers for addressing its challenges. Game Based Organization Design shows that one of the ways to bridge this gap is to introduce insights and approaches from video game design into the design of organizational systems. This book takes basic ideas such as games, play, and rules as the foundation for a new approach to organizational design and strategy formulation. Based on seven years of research and consulting work, this is the first time these original ideas have been made available in such a comprehensive and accessible manner to both executives and students of management. Game Based Organization Design combines a sound theoretical basis with many examples of practical application as well as useful pointers for readers who wish to put these ideas into action.

Nash equilibrium is the central solution concept in Game Theory. Since Nash's original paper in 1951, it has found countless applications in modeling strategic behavior of traders in markets, (human) drivers and (electronic) routers in congested networks, nations in nuclear disarmament negotiations, and more. A decade ago, the relevance of this solution concept was called into question by computer scientists, who proved (under appropriate complexity assumptions) that computing a Nash equilibrium is an intractable problem. And if centralized, specially designed algorithms cannot find Nash equilibria, why should we expect distributed, selfish agents to converge to one? The remaining hope was that at least approximate Nash equilibria can be efficiently computed.Understanding whether there is an efficient algorithm for approximate Nash equilibrium has been the central open problem in this field for the past decade. In this book, we provide strong evidence that even finding an approximate Nash equilibrium is intractable. We prove several intractability theorems for different settings (two-player games and many-player games) and models (computational complexity, query complexity, and communication complexity). In particular, our main result is that under a plausible and natural complexity assumption ("Exponential Time Hypothesis for PPAD"), there is no polynomial-time algorithm for finding an approximate Nash equilibrium in two-player games. The problem of approximate Nash equilibrium in a two-player game poses a unique technical challenge: it is a member of the class PPAD, which captures the complexity of several fundamental total problems, i.e., problems that always have a solution; and it also admits a quasipolynomial time algorithm. Either property alone is believed to place this problem far below NP-hard problems in the complexity hierarchy; having both simultaneously places it just above P, at what can be called the frontier of intractability. Indeed, the tools we develop in this book to advance on this frontier are useful for proving hardness of approximation of several other important problems whose complexity lies between P and NP: Brouwer's fixed point, market equilibrium, CourseMatch (A-CEEI), densest k-subgraph, community detection, VC dimension and Littlestone dimension, and signaling in zero-sum games.

This book focuses on the latest advances in nonlinear dynamic modeling in economics and finance, mainly-but not solely-based on the description of strategic interaction by using concepts and methods from dynamic and evolutionary game theory. The respective chapters cover a range of theoretical issues and examples concerning how the qualitative theory of dynamical systems is used to analyze the local and global bifurcations that characterize complex behaviors observed in social systems where heterogeneous and boundedly rational economic agents interact. Nonlinear dynamical systems, represented by difference and differential and functional equations, are extensively used to simulate the behavior of time-evolving economic systems, also in the presence of time lags, discontinuities, and hysteresis phenomena. In addition, some theoretical issues and particular applications are discussed, as well. The contributions gathered here offer an up-to-date review of the latest research in this rapidly developing research area.

The aim of Cooperative Games on Combinatorial Structures is to analyze conflict situations in which two or more players can make coalitions and obtain prizes and penalties. This approach to situations of competition and cooperation was given in the seminal treatise by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern, Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Cooperative game theory has succeeded in providing many applications of game theory. In this volume, games defined on combinatorial structures will be analyzed, i.e. a set system over a set of players. In many situations the author will work in a closure space. Examples of closure operators are the spanning operator of linear algebra and all convex hull operators. Chapters 1-4 constitute a review of mathematical concepts from Cooperative Game Theory, Graph Theory, Linear and Integer Programming, Combinatorial Optimization, Discrete Convex Analysis and Computational Complexity. The table of contents is a short guide to the topics and methods covered in this book. In Chapters 11 and 12, several notebooks are presented with the system Mathematica by Wolfram in the contexts of the packages DiscreteMath (Skiena) and Cooperative (Carter). There will also be found in the book several research projects. These are intended to offer new ideas that the reader should consider with caution. This book will be of interest to graduate students with some experience in game theory or mathematical programming and professional researchers in game theory, operational research and its applications in economic theory, and the political and social sciences. In addition, it will be especially useful for professionals who are interested in models for understanding and managing conflicts: management and operational research scientists, political and military scientists, and professional negotiators.

This book describes a system of mathematical models and methods that can be used to analyze real economic and managerial decisions and to improve their effectiveness. Application areas include: management of development and operation budgets, assessment and management of economic systems using an energy entropy approach, equation of exchange rates and forecasting foreign exchange operations, evaluation of innovative projects, monitoring of governmental programs, risk management of investment processes, decisions on the allocation of resources, and identification of competitive industrial clusters. The proposed methods and models were tested on the example of Kazakhstan's economy, but the generated solutions will be useful for applications at other levels and in other countries. Regarding your book "Mathematical Methods and Models in Economics", I am impressed because now it is time when "econometrics" is becoming more appreciated by economists and by schools that are the hosts or employers of modern economists. ... Your presented results really impressed me. John F. Nash, Jr., Princeton University, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences The book is within my scope of interest because of its novelty and practicality. First, there is a need for realistic modeling of complex systems, both natural and artificial that conclude computer and economic systems. There has been an ongoing effort in developing models dealing with complexity and incomplete knowledge. Consequently, it is clear to recognize the contribution of Mutanov to encapsulate economic modeling with emphasis on budgeting and innovation. Secondly, the method proposed by Mutanov has been verified by applying to the case of the Republic of Kazakhstan, with her vibrant emerging economy. Thirdly, Chapter 5 of the book is of particular interest for the computer technology community because it deals with innovation. In summary, the book of Mutanov should become one of the outstanding recognized pragmatic guides for dealing with innovative systems. Andrzej Rucinski, University of New Hampshire This book is unique in its theoretical findings and practical applicability. The book is an illuminating study based on an applied mathematical model which uses methods such as linear programming and input-output analysis. Moreover, this work demonstrates the author's great insight and academic brilliance in the fields of finance, technological innovations and marketing vis-a-vis the market economy. From both theoretical and practical standpoint, this work is indeed a great achievement. Yeon Cheon Oh, President of Seoul National University

The paradigms of dynamic games play an important role in the development of multi-agent models in engineering, economics, and management science. The applicability of their concepts stems from the ability to encompass situations with uncertainty, incomplete information, fluctuating coalition structure, and coupled constraints imposed on the strategies of all the players. This book - an outgrowth of the 10th International Symposium on Dynamic Games - presents current developments of the theory of dynamic games and its applications to various domains, in particular energy-environment economics and management sciences. The volume uses dynamic game models of various sorts to approach and solve several problems pertaining to pursuit-evasion, marketing, finance, climate and environmental economics, resource exploitation, as well as auditing and tax evasions. In addition, it includes some chapters on cooperative games, which are increasingly drawing dynamic approaches to their classical solutions. dynamic game theory and its applications for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in applied mathematics, engineering, economics, as well as environmental and management sciences.

This text bridges the gulf between theoretical economic principles of negotiation and auction theory and their multifaceted applications in actual practice. It is intended to be a supplement to the already existing literature, as a comprehensive collection of reports detailing experiences and results of very different negotiations and auctions.

In recent years game theory has had a substantial impact on computer science, especially on Internet- and e-commerce-related issues. Algorithmic Game Theory, first published in 2007, develops the central ideas and results of this exciting area in a clear and succinct manner. More than 40 of the top researchers in this field have written chapters that go from the foundations to the state of the art. Basic chapters on algorithmic methods for equilibria, mechanism design and combinatorial auctions are followed by chapters on important game theory applications such as incentives and pricing, cost sharing, information markets and cryptography and security. This definitive work will set the tone of research for the next few years and beyond. Students, researchers, and practitioners alike need to learn more about these fascinating theoretical developments and their widespread practical application.

This book outlines the latest trends in the use of multicriteria analysis in agriculture by highlighting recent applications for modeling agricultural decision-making. It introduces specific case studies using multicriteria analysis as a method for selecting multiattribute discrete alternatives or solving multiobjective planning problems. The book is intended for a broad readership, including agricultural and environmental economists, engineers and all scientists whose work involves the management of agricultural resources and decision-making in agriculture. The methods and applications presented in this book cover decision-making processes in agricultural and environmental contexts. The methodologies described consider multiple criteria simultaneously in a wide range of complex decision-making contexts by taking into account multiple, conflicting criteria. Given the wide range of case studies covered, the book offers a comprehensive guide to decision-making in the agricultural context and beyond.

Herbert Scarf is a highly esteemed distinguished American economist. He is internationally famous for his early epoch-making work on optimal inventory policies and his highly influential study with Andrew Clark on optimal policies for a multi-echelon inventory problem, which initiated the important and flourishing field of supply chain management. Equally, he has gained world recognition for his classic study on the stability of the Walrasian price adjustment processes and his fundamental analysis on the relationship between the core and the set of competitive equilibria (the so-called Edgeworth conjecture). Further achievements include his remarkable sufficient condition for the existence of a core in non-transferable utility games and general exchange economies, his seminal paper with Lloyd Shapley on housing markets, and his pioneering study on increasing returns and models of production in the presence of indivisibilities. All in all, however, the name of Scarf is always remembered as a synonym for the computation of economic equilibria and fixed points. In the early 1960s he invented a path-breaking technique for computing equilibrium prices.This work has generated a major research field in economics termed Applied General Equilibrium Analysis and a corresponding area in operations research known as Simplicial Fixed Point Methods. This book comprises all his research articles and consists of four volumes. The volume collects Herbert Scarf's papers in the area of Applied Equilibrium Analysis.

It is impossible to understand modern economics without knowledge of the basic tools of gametheory and mechanism design. This book provides a graduate-level introduction to the economic modeling of strategic behavior. The goal is to teach Economics doctoral students the tools of game theory and mechanism design that all economists should know.

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.

Herbert Scarf is a highly esteemed distinguished American economist. He is internationally famous for his early epoch-making work on optimal inventory policies and his highly influential study with Andrew Clark on optimal policies for a multi-echelon inventory problem, which initiated the important and flourishing field of supply chain management. Equally, he has gained world recognition for his classic study on the stability of the Walrasian price adjustment processes and his fundamental analysis on the relationship between the core and the set of competitive equilibria (the so-called Edgeworth conjecture). Further achievements include his remarkable sufficient condition for the existence of a core in non-transferable utility games and general exchange economies, his seminal paper with Lloyd Shapley on housing markets, and his pioneering study on increasing returns and models of production in the presence of indivisibilities. All in all, however, the name of Scarf is always remembered as a synonym for the computation of economic equilibria and fixed points. In the early 1960s he invented a path-breaking technique for computing equilibrium prices.This work has generated a major research field in economics termed Applied General Equilibrium Analysis and a corresponding area in operations research known as Simplicial Fixed Point Methods. This book comprises all his research articles and consists of four volumes. The volume collects Herbert Scarfs papers in the area of Production in Indivisibilities and the Theories of Large Firms.

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive and systematic introduction to the ranking methods for interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets, multi-criteria decision-making methods with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy sets, and group decision-making methods with interval-valued intuitionistic fuzzy preference relations. Including numerous application examples and illustrations with tables and figures and presenting the authors' latest research developments, it is a valuable resource for researchers and professionals in the fields of fuzzy mathematics, operations research, information science, management science and decision analysis.

Using the O.D.D. (Overview, Design concepts, Detail) protocol, this title explores the role of agent-based modeling in predicting the feasibility of various approaches to sustainability. The chapters incorporated in this volume consist of real case studies to illustrate the utility of agent-based modeling and complexity theory in discovering a path to more efficient and sustainable lifestyles. The topics covered within include: households' attitudes toward recycling, designing decision trees for representing sustainable behaviors, negotiation-based parking allocation, auction-based traffic signal control, and others. This selection of papers will be of interest to social scientists who wish to learn more about agent-based modeling as well as experts in the field of agent-based modeling.

This book analyses the changes to the regulation of everyday life that have taken place as a result of datafication, the ever-growing analytical, predictive, and structuring role of algorithms, and the prominence of the platform economy. This new form of regulation - algorithmic governance - ranges from nudging individuals towards predefined outcomes to outright structuration of behaviour through digital architecture. The author reveals the strength and pervasiveness of algorithmic politics through a comparison with the main traditional form of regulation: law. These changes are subsequently demonstrated to reflect a broader shift away from anthropocentric accounts of the world. In doing so, the book adopts a posthumanist framework which focuses on deep embeddedness and interactions between humans, the natural environment, technology, and code.

Although valued for its ability to allow teams to collaborate and foster coalitional behaviors among the participants, game theory's application to networking systems is not without challenges. Distributed Strategic Learning for Wireless Engineers illuminates the promise of learning in dynamic games as a tool for analyzing network evolution and underlines the potential pitfalls and difficulties likely to be encountered. Establishing the link between several theories, this book demonstrates what is needed to learn strategic interaction in wireless networks under uncertainty, randomness, and time delays. It addresses questions such as: How much information is enough for effective distributed decision making? Is having more information always useful in terms of system performance? What are the individual learning performance bounds under outdated and imperfect measurement? What are the possible dynamics and outcomes if the players adopt different learning patterns? If convergence occurs, what is the convergence time of heterogeneous learning? What are the issues of hybrid learning? How can one develop fast and efficient learning schemes in scenarios where some players have more information than the others? What is the impact of risk-sensitivity in strategic learning systems? How can one construct learning schemes in a dynamic environment in which one of the players do not observe a numerical value of its own-payoffs but only a signal of it? How can one learn "unstable" equilibria and global optima in a fully distributed manner? The book provides an explicit description of how players attempt to learn over time about the game and about the behavior of others. It focuses on finite and infinite systems, where the interplay among the individual adjustments undertaken by the different players generates different learning dynamics, heterogeneous learning, risk-sensitive learning, and hybrid dynamics.

Mathematical Puzzle Tales from Mount Olympus uses fascinating tales from Greek Mythology as the background for introducing mathematics puzzles to the general public. A background in high school mathematics will be ample preparation for using this book, and it should appeal to anyone who enjoys puzzles and recreational mathematics. Features: Combines the arts and science, and emphasizes the fact that mathematics straddles both domains. Great resource for students preparing for mathematics competitions, and the trainers of such students.

This is a series of interdisciplinary conferences in mathematics, philosophy, computer science and linguistics. The main goal is to re-establish the traditionally strong links between these areas of research that have been lost in the past decades. The second conference in the series had the subtitle Applications of Mathematical Logic in Philosophy and Linguistics and brought speakers from all parts of the formal sciences together to give a holistic view of how mathematical methods can improve our philosophical and technical understanding of language and scientific discourse, ranging from the theoretical level up to applications in language recognition software.

Herbert Scarf is a highly esteemed distinguished American economist. He is internationally famous for his early epoch-making work on optimal inventory policies and his highly influential study with Andrew Clark on optimal policies for a multi-echelon inventory problem, which initiated the important and flourishing field of supply chain management. Equally, he has gained world recognition for his classic study on the stability of the Walrasian price adjustment processes and his fundamental analysis on the relationship between the core and the set of competitive equilibria (the so-called Edgeworth conjecture). Further achievements include his remarkable sufficient condition for the existence of a core in non-transferable utility games and general exchange economies, his seminal paper with Lloyd Shapley on housing markets, and his pioneering study on increasing returns and models of production in the presence of indivisibilities. All in all, however, the name of Scarf is always remembered as a synonym for the computation of economic equilibria and fixed points. In the early 1960s he invented a path-breaking technique for computing equilibrium prices.This work has generated a major research field in economics termed Applied General Equilibrium Analysis and a corresponding area in operations research known as Simplicial Fixed Point Methods. This book comprises all his research articles and consists of four volumes. This volume collects Herbert Scarf's papers in the area of Operations Research and Management.

The structures of the world's national and international, political and economic institutions have largely resulted from intuitive and ad hoc organization with reforms taking place on a costly trial-and-error basis. This book offers a comprehensive evaluation of the tools which can be used for a more rational and formal approach to institutional design. As new institutions and, indeed, new national governments are being formed and developed all the time, there is a considerable need for formal models that can facilitate their design. This book offers conceptual approaches and theories that shed new light on how various social and political institutions can emerge as the outcome of goal-directed rational behaviour. The author provides tools for evaluating existing institutions and for setting up new ones, demonstrating the applicability of decision and game theoretic tools, social choice theory and mechanism design to the construction of political and economic institutions. Using these approaches he particularly discusses the practical implications for the design of institutions in the European Union. This important book will be welcomed by students and scholars interested in government and political science, rational choice theory, methodology in the social sciences, and the microeconomics of rational behaviour.

In the quarter of a century since three mathematicians and game theorists collaborated to create Winning Ways for Your Mathematical Plays, the book has become the definitive work on the subject of mathematical games. Now carefully revised and broken down into four volumes to accommodate new developments, the Second Edition retains the original's wealth of wit and wisdom. The authors' insightful strategies, blended with their witty and irreverent style, make reading a profitable pleasure. In Volume 4, the authors present a Diamond of a find, covering one-player games such as Solitaire.

Herbert Scarf is a highly esteemed distinguished American economist. He is internationally famous for his early epoch-making work on optimal inventory policies and his highly influential study with Andrew Clark on optimal policies for a multi-echelon inventory problem, which initiated the important and flourishing field of supply chain management. Equally, he has gained world recognition for his classic study on the stability of the Walrasian price adjustment processes and his fundamental analysis on the relationship between the core and the set of competitive equilibria (the so-called Edgeworth conjecture). Further achievements include his remarkable sufficient condition for the existence of a core in non-transferable utility games and general exchange economies, his seminal paper with Lloyd Shapley on housing markets, and his pioneering study on increasing returns and models of production in the presence of indivisibilities. All in all, however, the name of Scarf is always remembered as a synonym for the computation of economic equilibria and fixed points. In the early 1960s he invented a path-breaking technique for computing equilibrium prices. This work has generated a major research field in economics termed Applied General Equilibrium Analysis and a corresponding area in operations research known as Simplicial Fixed Point Methods. This book comprises all his research articles and consists of four volumes. This volume collects Herbert Scarf's papers in the area of Economics and Game Theory.

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.

The Greek economic crisis has imperilled the stability of the eurozone, generating much global anxiety. Policymakers, analysts, and the media have daily debated the course of the Greek economy, prescribing ways to move forward. This collection of essays progressively moves from an analysis of the causes of the crisis and the policy responses so far to a debate on some of the country s advantages and capabilities that should underpin its new development model and propel the return to growth. The book analytically chooses to view the glass as half-full and seeks to provide motivation and inspiration for change by indicating some of the economic sectors where Greece maintains a comparative advantage. Therefore, it challenges the emerging picture of Greece as a country doomed to failure, where everything falls apart.