In today's confrontational and connected world, communication is the key strategic act. This book uses drama theory-a radical extension of game theory-to show how best to communicate so as to manage the emotionally charged confrontations occurring in any worthwhile relationship. Alongside a toolset that provides a systematic framework for analysing conflicts, drama theory explains why people need to listen to, and rely on, their feelings to help shake themselves out of fixed, unproductive positions and to find new ways of solving tough problems. This guide provides a sufficient grounding in the approach to enable you to apply it immediately for your own benefit and for the benefit of those with whom you work. A host of inspirational examples are included based upon actual situations in social and personal relations, business and organisational relations, defence and political management. These will give you an entirely fresh way of seeing how power is exercised in everyday interpersonal exchanges and a greater critical awareness of such factors as subtext and plotholes in public narratives. Using this approach you will be able to overcome the dilemmas of credibility and disbelief to build compelling messages that underpin your strategic intent. Moving beyond the vague platitudes of concepts like emotional intelligence, drama theory will also help you to avoid the pathologies that bedevil the process of managing conflicts and find ways of achieving authentic resolutions.

What if life is a game? Are you winning? Have you even decided what 'winning' is? Game design could be defined in many ways, but here the term is used to denote the practice of creating choices. Designing a game, in this sense, involves crafting limits, rewards, incentives, and risks in such a way that the person who interacts with the game - the player - makes choices that have consequences. Edward Castronova urges readers to think about the fundamentals of the human condition and compare them to different games that we all know. In some ways, life is like an idle game: providing unchallenging distractions that fit easily into a person's daily routine. In other ways, life is like the game Minesweeper: You poke in different places to learn about what you don't know, taking care to avoid big explosions. Or, life is like a role-playing game: You adopt a persona and speak your part, always seeking adventure. Bringing together questions relating to diverse fields - such as politics, economics, sociology and philosophy - Castronova persuades readers to broaden the scope of game design to answer questions about life's everyday obstacles. The object of this book is to take seriously the idea that life is a game. The goal is not to make readers wealthier or healthier. Its goal is to go on a journey into the human condition, with game design as a guide.

This book is a collection of selected papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Academy of Management and Business Economics (AEDEM), held at the Faculty of Economics and Business of the University of Barcelona, 05 07 June, 2012. This edition of the conference has been presented with the slogan Creating new opportunities in an uncertain environment . There are different ways for assessing uncertainty in management but this book mainly focused on soft computing theories and their role in assessing uncertainty in a complex world.

The present book gives a comprehensive overview of general management topics and discusses some of the most recent developments in all the areas of business and management including management, marketing, business statistics, innovation and technology, finance, sports and tourism. This book might be of great interest for anyone working in the area of management and business economics and might be especially useful for scientists and graduate students doing research in these fields."

This book presents the huge variety of current contributions of game theory to economics. The impressive contributions fall broadly into two categories. Some lay out in a jargon free manner a particular branch of the theory, the evolution of one of its concepts, or a problem, that runs through its development. Others are original pieces of work that are significant to game theory as a whole.
After taking the reader through a concise history of game theory, the contributions include such themes as:
*the connections between Von Neumann's mathematical game theory and the domain assigned to him today
*the strategic use of information by game players
*the problem of the coordination of strategic choices between independent players
*cooperative games and their place within the literature of games plus new developments in non-cooperative games
*possible applications for game theory in industrial and financial economics differential qualitative games and entry dissuasion.

The European Conference on Complex Systems, held under the patronage of the Complex Systems Society, is an annual event that has become the leading European conference devoted to complexity science. ECCS'12, its ninth edition, took place in Brussels, during the first week of September 2012. It gathered about 650 scholars representing a wide range of topics relating to complex systems research, with emphasis on interdisciplinary approaches. More specifically, the following tracks were covered:

1. Foundations of Complex Systems

2. Complexity, Information and Computation

3. Prediction, Policy and Planning, Environment

4. Biological Complexity

5. Interacting Populations, Collective Behavior

6. Social Systems, Economics and Finance

This book contains a selection of the contributions presented at the conference and its satellite meetings. Its contents reflect the extent, diversity and richness of research areas in the field, both fundamental and applied.

"

This textbook presents worked-out exercises on game theory with detailed step-by-step explanations. While most textbooks on game theory focus on theoretical results, this book focuses on providing practical examples in which students can learn to systematically apply theoretical solution concepts to different fields of economics and business. The text initially presents games that are required in most courses at the undergraduate level and gradually advances to more challenging games appropriate for graduate level courses. The first six chapters cover complete-information games, separately analyzing simultaneous-move and sequential-move games, with applications in industrial economics, law, and regulation. Subsequent chapters dedicate special attention to incomplete information games, such as signaling games, cheap talk games, and equilibrium refinements, emphasizing common steps and including graphical illustrations to focus students' attention on the most relevant payoff comparisons at each point of the analysis. In addition, exercises are ranked according to their difficulty, with a letter (A-C) next to the exercise number. This allows students to pace their studies and instructors to structure their classes accordingly. By providing detailed worked-out examples, this text gives students at various levels the tools they need to apply the tenets of game theory in many fields of business and economics. The second edition of the text has been revised to provide additional exercises at the introductory and intermediate level, expanding the scope of the book to be appropriate for upper undergraduate students looking to improve their understanding of the subject. The second edition also includes a new chapter devoted entirely to cheap talk games. Revised to appeal to a larger audience of instructors and students, this text is appropriate for introductory-to-intermediate courses in game theory at the upper undergraduate and graduate levels.

Individuals, firms, governments and nations behave strategically, for good and bad. Over the last few decades, game theory has been constructed and progressively refined to become the major tool used by social scientists to understand, predict and regulate strategic interaction among agents who often have conflicting interests. In the surprisingly anodyne jargon of the theory, they play games . This book offers an introduction to the basic tools of game theory and an overview of a number of applications to real-world cases, covering the areas of economics, politics and international relations. Each chapter is accompanied by some suggestions about further reading.

The rise of game theory has made bargaining one of the core issues in economic theory. Written at a theoretical and conceptual level, the book develops a framework for the analysis of bargaining processes. The framework focuses on the dynamic of the bargaining process, which is in contrast to much previous theoretical work on the subject, and most notably to the approaches stemming from game theory. Chapters include: * Decision-Making and Expectations in Theories of Bargaining * Decision-Making and Expectations in a Game Theory Model * Limitations of the Environment Concept * Game Theory as a Basis for a Theory of Bargaining * The Decision/Expectation/adjustment Approach * The Adjustment Process * Direct Interdependence and the Consistency of Decisions

The wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win. So wrote Zhuge Liang, the great Chinese military strategist. He was referring to battlefield tactics, but the same can be said about any strategic situation. Even seemingly certain defeat can be turned into victory whether in battle, business, or life by those with the strategic vision to recognize how to change the game to their own advantage.

The aim of David McAdams s Game-Changer is nothing less than to empower you with this wisdom not just to win in every strategic situation (or game ) you face but to change those games and the ecosystems in which they reside to transform your life and our lives together for the better.

Game-Changer develops six basic ways to change games commitment, regulation, cartelization, retaliation, trust, and relationships enlivened by countless colorful characters and unforgettable examples from the worlds of business, medicine, finance, military history, crime, sports, and more.

The book then digs into several real-world strategic challenges, such as how to keep prices low on the Internet, how to restore the public s lost trust in for-charity telemarketers, and even how to save mankind from looming and seemingly unstoppable drug-resistant disease. In each case, McAdams uses the game-theory approach developed in the book to identify the strategic crux of the problem and then leverages that game-awareness to brainstorm ways to change the game to solve or at least mitigate the underlying problem.

So get ready for a fascinating journey. You ll emerge a deeper strategic thinker, poised to change and win all the games you play. In doing so, you can also make the world a better place. Just one Game-Changer is] enough to seed and transform an entire organization into a more productive, happier, and altogether better place, McAdams writes. Just imagine what we can do together."

Steadily growing applications of game theory in modern science (including psychology, biology and economics) require sources to provide rapid access in both classical tools and recent developments to readers with diverse backgrounds. This book on game theory, its applications and mathematical methods, is written with this objective in mind.The book gives a concise but wide-ranging introduction to games including older (pre-game theory) party games and more recent topics like elections and evolutionary games and is generously spiced with excursions into philosophy, history, literature and politics. A distinguished feature is the clear separation of the text into two parts: elementary and advanced, which makes the book ideal for study at various levels.Part I displays basic ideas using no more than four arithmetic operations and requiring from the reader only some inclination to logical thinking. It can be used in a university degree course without any (or minimal) prerequisite in mathematics (say, in economics, business, systems biology), as well as for self-study by school teachers, social and natural scientists, businessmen or laymen. Part II is a rapid introduction to the mathematical methods of game theory, suitable for a mathematics degree course of various levels.To stimulate the mathematical and scientific imagination, graphics by a world-renowned mathematician and mathematics imaging artist, A T Fomenko, are used. The carefully selected works of this artist fit remarkably into the many ideas expressed in the book.This new edition has been updated and enlarged. In particular, two new chapters were added on statistical limit of games with many agents and on quantum games, reflecting possibly the two most stunning trends in the game theory of the 21st century.

Many of today's most commercially successful videogames, from Call of Duty to Company of Heroes, are war-themed titles that play out in what are framed as authentic real-world settings inspired by recent news headlines or drawn from history. While such games are marketed as authentic representations of war, they often provide a selective form of realism that eschews problematic, yet salient aspects of war. In addition, changes in the way Western states wage and frame actual wars makes contemporary conflicts increasingly resemble videogames when perceived from the vantage point of Western audiences. This interdisciplinary volume brings together scholars from games studies, media and cultural studies, politics and international relations, and related fields to examine the complex relationships between military-themed videogames and real-world conflict, and to consider how videogames might deal with history, memory, and conflict in alternative ways. It asks: What is the role of videogames in the formation and negotiation of cultural memory of past wars? How do game narratives and designs position the gaming subject in relation to history, war and militarism? And how far do critical, anti-war/peace games offer an alternative or challenge to mainstream commercial titles?

Dynamic optimization is rocket science and more. This volume teaches how to harness the modern theory of dynamic optimization to solve practical problems, not only from space flight but also in emerging social applications such as the control of drugs, corruption, and terror. These innovative domains are usefully thought about in terms of populations, incentives, and interventions, concepts which map well into the framework of optimal dynamic control. This volume is designed to be a lively introduction to the mathematics and a bridge to these hot topics in the economics of crime for current scholars. We celebrate Pontryagin s Maximum Principle that crowning intellectual achievement of human understanding and push its frontiers by exploring models that display multiple equilibria whose basins of attraction are separated by higher-dimensional DNSS "tipping points." That rich theory is complemented by numerical methods available through a companion web site."

This book describes highly applicable mathematics without using calculus or limits in general. The study agrees with the opinion that the traditional calculus/analysis is not necessarily the only proper grounding for academics who wish to apply mathematics. The choice of topics is based on a desire to present those facets of mathematics which will be useful to economists and social/behavioral scientists. The volume is divided into seven chapters. Chapter I presents a brief review of the solution of systems of linear equations by the use of matrices. Chapter III introduces the theory of probability. The rest of the book deals with new developments in mathematics such as linear and dynamic programming, the theory of networks and the theory of games. These developments are generally recognized as the most important field in the new mathematics' and they also have specific applications in the management sciences.

Game Theory and the Law is a collection of previously published articles in which ideas from game theory and the economics of asymmetric information are applied to legal issues. Game theory's method is to simplify a situation by describing it in terms of players, actions, payoffs, after which the players' strategic interactions can be described. Whether used explicitly or implicitly, this is a highly useful approach to law. This important volume collects together the classic articles on the subject together with surveys of the approach and illustrative examples of the use of game theory in law.

This book presents a survey of the aspects of economic complexity, with a focus on foundational, interdisciplinary ideas. The long-awaited follow up to his 2011 volume Complex Evolutionary Dynamics in Urban-Regional and Ecologic-Economic Systems: From Catastrophe to Chaos and Beyond, this volume draws together the threads of Rosser's earlier work on complexity theory and its wide applications in economics and an expanded list of related disciplines. The book begins with a full account of the broader categories of complexity in economics--dynamic, computational, hierarchical, and structural--before shifting to more detailed analysis. The next two chapters address problems associated with computational complexity, especially those of computability, and discuss the Godel Incompleteness Theorem with a focus on reflexivity. The middle chapters discuss the relationship between entropy, econophysics, evolution, and economic complexity, respectively, with applications in urban and regional dynamics, ecological economics, general equilibrium theory, as well as financial market dynamics. The final chapter works to bring together these themes into a broader framework and expose some of the limits concerning analysis of deeper foundational issues. With applications in all disciplines characterized by interconnected nonlinear adaptive systems, this book is appropriate for graduate students, professors and practitioners in economics and related disciplines such as regional science, mathematics, physics, biology, environmental sciences, philosophy, and psychology.

The financial market melt-down of the years 2007-2009 has posed great challenges for studies on financial economics. This financial economics text focuses on the dynamic interaction of financial markets and economic activity. The financial market to be studied here encompasses the money and bond market, credit market, stock market and foreign exchange market; economic activity includes the actions and interactions of firms, banks, households, governments and countries. The book shows how economic activity affects asset prices and the financial market, and how asset prices and financial market volatility and crises impact economic activity. The book offers extensive coverage of new and advanced topics in financial economics such as the term structure of interest rates, credit derivatives and credit risk, domestic and international portfolio theory, multi-agent and evolutionary approaches, capital asset pricing beyond consumption-based models, and dynamic portfolio decisions. Moreover a completely new section of the book is dedicated to the recent financial market meltdown of the years 2007-2009. Emphasis is placed on empirical evidence relating to episodes of financial instability and financial crises in the U.S. and in Latin American, Asian and Euro-area countries. Overall, the book explains what researchers and practitioners in the financial sector need to know about the financial-real interaction, and what practitioners and policy makers need to know about the financial market.

Praised by "Entertainment Weekly" as "the man who put the fizz into physics," Dr. Len Fisher turns his attention to the science of cooperation in his lively and thought-provoking book. Fisher shows how the modern science of game theory has helped biologists to understand the evolution of cooperation in nature, and investigates how we might apply those lessons to our own society. In a series of experiments that take him from the polite confines of an English dinner party to crowded supermarkets, congested Indian roads, and the wilds of outback Australia, not to mention baseball strategies and the intricacies of quantum mechanics, Fisher sheds light on the problem of global cooperation. The outcomes are sometimes hilarious, sometimes alarming, but always revealing. A witty romp through a serious science, "Rock, Paper, Scissors" will both teach and delight anyone interested in what it what it takes to get people to work together.

This book analyzes the following four distinct, although not dissimilar, areas of social choice theory and welfare economics: nonstrategic choice, Harsanyi's aggregation theorems, distributional ethics and strategic choice. While for aggregation of individual ranking of social states, whether the persons behave strategically or non-strategically, the decision making takes place under complete certainty; in the Harsanyi framework uncertainty has a significant role in the decision making process. Another ingenious characteristic of the book is the discussion of ethical approaches to evaluation of inequality arising from unequal distributions of achievements in the different dimensions of human well-being. Given its wide coverage, combined with newly added materials, end-chapter problems and bibliographical notes, the book will be helpful material for students and researchers interested in this frontline area research. Its lucid exposition, along with non-technical and graphical illustration of the concepts, use of numerical examples, makes the book a useful text.

Based on the "Fourth International Conference on Dynamics of Disasters" (Kalamata, Greece, July 2019), this volume includes contributions from experts who share their latest discoveries on natural and unnatural disasters. Authors provide overviews of the tactical points involved in disaster relief, outlines of hurdles from mitigation and preparedness to response and recovery, and uses for mathematical models to describe natural and man-made disasters. Topics covered include economics, optimization, machine learning, government, management, business, humanities, engineering, medicine, mathematics, computer science, behavioral studies, emergency services, and environmental studies will engage readers from a wide variety of fields and backgrounds.

This proceedings book presents state-of-the-art developments in theory, methodology, and applications of network analysis across sociology, computational science, education research, literature studies, political science, international relations, social media research, and urban studies. The papers comprising this collection were presented at the Fifth 'Networks in the Global World' conference organized by the Centre for German and European Studies of St. Petersburg University and Bielefeld University and held on July 7-9, 2020. This biannual conference series revolves around key interdisciplinary issues in the focus of network analysts, such as the multidimensional approach to social reality, translation of theories and methods across disciplines, and mixing of data and methods. The distinctive features of this book are the emphasis on in-depth linkages between theory, method, and applications, the blend of qualitative and quantitative methods, and the joint consideration of different network levels, types, and contexts. The topics covered by the papers include interrelation of social and cultural structures, constellations of power, and patterns of interaction in areas ranging from various types of communities (local, international, educational, political, and so on) to social media and literature. The book is useful for practicing researchers, graduate and postgraduate students, and educators interested in network analysis of social relations, politics, economy, and culture. Features that set the book apart from others in the field: * The book offers a unique cross-disciplinary blend of computational and ethnographic network analyses applied to a diverse spectrum of spheres, from literature and education to urban planning and policymaking. * Embracing conceptual, methodological, and empirical works, the book is among the few in network analysis to emphasize connections between theory, method, and applications. * The book brings together authors and empirical contexts from all over the globe, with a particular emphasis on European societies.

A key direction for research in systems and control involves engineering systems. These are highly distributed collective systems (with decisions, information and objectives distributed throughout) that involve humans. As a result, decisions have the potential to be influenced by socioeconomic factors outside the realm of limited computation capacities. Engineering systems emphasize the potential of control and games beyond traditional applications and game theory can be used to design incentives to obtain socially desirable behaviours on the part of the players, including changing consumption patterns or better traffic distribution. This unique book addresses both the foundations of game theory, with emphasis on the physical intuition behind the concepts, and new trends in the study of cooperation and competition in large complex distributed systems. It is ideal for students and researchers in several aspects of engineering, as well as for social scientists or biologists working on adaption mechanisms and evolutionary dynamics.

This book provides the fundamental theory of distributed optimization, game and learning. It includes those working directly in optimization,-and also many other issues like time-varying topology, communication delay, equality or inequality constraints,-and random projections. This book is meant for the researcher and engineer who uses distributed optimization, game and learning theory in fields like dynamic economic dispatch, demand response management and PHEV routing of smart grids.

"Efficient breach" is one of the most discussed topics in the literature of law and economics. What remedy incentivizes the parties of a contract to perform contracts if and only if it is efficient? This book provides a new perception based on an in-depth analysis of the impact the market structure, asymmetry of information, and deviations from the rational choice model have, comprehensively. The author compares the two predominant remedies for breach of contract which have been adopted by most jurisdictions and also found access to international conventions like the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CiSG): Specific performance and expectation damages. The book illustrates the complexity such a comparison has under more realistic assumptions. The author shows that no simple answer is possible, but one needs to account for the circumstances. The comparison takes an economic approach to law applying game theory. The game-theoretic models are consistent throughout the entire book which makes it easy for the reader to understand what effects different assumptions about the market structure, the distribution of information, and deviations from the rational choice model have, and how they are intertwined.

This book comprises selected papers of the 25th International Conference on Difference Equations and Applications, ICDEA 2019, held at UCL, London, UK, in June 2019. The volume details the latest research on difference equations and discrete dynamical systems, and their application to areas such as biology, economics, and the social sciences. Some chapters have a tutorial style and cover the history and more recent developments for a particular topic, such as chaos, bifurcation theory, monotone dynamics, and global stability. Other chapters cover the latest personal research contributions of the author(s) in their particular area of expertise and range from the more technical articles on abstract systems to those that discuss the application of difference equations to real-world problems. The book is of interest to both Ph.D. students and researchers alike who wish to keep abreast of the latest developments in difference equations and discrete dynamical systems.

This book includes papers presented at the ISDG12-GTM2019 International Meeting on Game Theory, as a joint meeting of the 12th International ISDG Workshop and the 13th "International Conference on Game Theory and Management", held in St. Petersburg in July 2019. The topics cover a wide range of game-theoretic models and include both theory and applications, including applications to management.