Game theory means rigorous strategic thinking. It s the art of anticipating your opponent s next moves, knowing full well that your rival is trying to do the same thing to you. Though parts of game theory involve simple common sense, much is counterintuitive, and it can only be mastered by developing a new way of seeing the world. Using a diverse array of rich case studies from pop culture, TV, movies, sports, politics, and history the authors show how nearly every business and personal interaction has a game-theory component to it. Mastering game theory will make you more successful in business and life, and this lively book is the key to that mastery."

A major bestseller in Japan, Financial Times Top Ten book of the year, Book-of-the-Month Club bestseller, and required reading at the best business schools, Thinking Strategically is a crash course in outmaneauvering any rival. This entertaining guide builds on scores of case studies taken from business, sports, the movies, politics, and gambling. It outlines the basics of good strategy making and then shows how you can apply them in any area of your life.

"A gem of a book. It makes some important insights on the frontiers of economics and game theory easily accessible, tremendously enjoyable, and practically useful."—Buron G. Malkiel, author of A Random Walk Down Wall Street

"Dixit and Nalebuff set out sure-fire rules for thinking about strategy."—David Henderson, Fortune

"A fascinating new book that can be read with real pleasure. . . . The problem is, of course that if Dixit and Nalebuff can improve your strategic IQ, they can improve your competitor's as well—and the Japanese rights were sold months ago."—David Warsh, Washington Post

* This is the new edition of a popular student textbook. The first edition was well-received. The author has made revisions and additions to enhance the book's usefulness without destroying its distinctive character as a lucid, thorough, and readable text. It gives a broad treatment of optimization methods, building on simple economic theory and elementary linear algebra and calculus, and reinforcing each new mathematical idea by relating it to its economics application.

How can property rights be protected and contracts be enforced in countries where the rule of law is ineffective or absent? How can firms from advanced market economies do business in such circumstances? In "Lawlessness and Economics," Avinash Dixit examines the theory of private institutions that transcend or supplement weak economic governance from the state.

In much of the world and through much of history, private mechanisms--such as long-term relationships, arbitration, social networks to disseminate information and norms to impose sanctions, and for-profit enforcement services--have grown up in place of formal, state-governed institutions. Even in countries with strong legal systems, many of these mechanisms continue under the shadow of the law. Numerous case studies and empirical investigations have demonstrated the variety, importance, and merits, and drawbacks of such institutions.

This book builds on these studies and constructs a toolkit of theoretical models to analyze them. The models shed new conceptual light on the different modes of governance, and deepen our understanding of the interaction of the alternative institutions with each other and with the government's law. For example, one model explains the limit on the size of social networks and illuminates problems in the transition to more formal legal systems as economies grow beyond this limit. Other models explain why for-profit enforcement is inefficient. The models also help us understand why state law dovetails with some non-state institutions and collides with others. This can help less-developed countries and transition economies devise better processes for the introduction or reform of their formal legal systems.

A clear, comprehensive introduction to the study of game theory. In the fourth edition, new real-world examples and compelling end-of-chapter exercises engage students with game theory.

A new paradigm for balancing flexibility and commitment in management strategy through the amalgamation of real options and game theory. Corporate managers who face both strategic uncertainty and market uncertainty confront a classic trade-off between commitment and flexibility. They can stake a claim by making a large capital investment today, influencing their rivals' behavior, or they can take a "wait and see" approach to avoid adverse market consequences tomorrow. In Competitive Strategy, Benoit Chevalier-Roignant and Lenos Trigeorgis describe an emerging paradigm that can quantify and balance commitment and flexibility, "option games," by which the decision-making approaches of real options and game theory can be combined. The authors first discuss prerequisite concepts and tools from basic game theory, industrial organization, and real options analysis, and then present the new approach in discrete time and later in continuous time. Their presentation of continuous-time option games is the first systematic coverage of the topic and fills a significant gap in the existing literature. Competitive Strategy provides a rigorous yet pragmatic and intuitive approach to strategy formulation. It synthesizes research in the areas of strategy, economics, and finance in a way that is accessible to readers not necessarily expert in the various fields involved.

This pithy and engaging volume shows that economists may be better equipped to predict the future than science fiction writers. Economists' ideas, based on both theory and practice, reflect their knowledge of the laws of human interactions as well as years of experimentation and reflection. Although perhaps not as screenplay-ready as a work of fiction, these economists' predictions are ready for their close-ups. In this book, ten prominent economists -- including Nobel laureates and several likely laureates -- offer their ideas about the world of the twenty-second century. In scenarios that range from the optimistic to the guardedly gloomy, these thinkers consider such topics as the transformation of work and wages, the continuing increase in inequality, the economic rise of China and India, the endlessly repeating cycle of crisis and (projected) recovery, the benefits of technology, the economic consequences of political extremism, and the long-range effects of climate change. For example, Daron Acemoglu offers a thoughtful discussion of how trends of the last century -- including uneven growth, technological integration, and resource scarcity -- might translate into the next; 2013 Nobelist Robert Shiller provides an innovative view of future risk management methods using information technology; 2012 Nobelist Alvin Roth projects his theory of Matching Markets into the next century, focusing on schools, jobs, marriage and family, and medicine; 1987 Nobelist Robert Solow considers the shift away from remunerated labor, among other subjects; and Martin Weitzman raises the intriguing but alarming possibility of using geoengineering techniques to mitigate the nevitable effects of climate change. In a 1930 essay mentioned by several contributors, "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren," John Maynard Keynes offered predictions that, read today, range from absolutely correct to spectacularly wrong. This book follows in Keynes's path, hoping, perhaps, to better his average.

The Making of Economic Policy begins by observing that most countries' trade policies are so blatantly contrary to all the prescriptions of the economist that there is no way to understand this discrepancy except by delving into the politics. The same is true for many other dimensions of economic policy. Avinash Dixit looks for an improved understanding of the politics of economic policy-making from a transaction cost perspective. Such costs of planning, implementing, and monitoring an exchange have proved critical to explaining many phenomena in industrial organization. Dixit discusses the variety of similar transaction costs encountered in the political process of making economic policy and how these costs affect the operation of different institutions and policies. Dixit organizes a burgeoning body of research in political economy in this framework. He uses U.S. fiscal policy and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) as two examples that illustrate the framework, and show how policy often deviates from the economist's ideal of efficiency. The approach reveals, however, that some seemingly inefficient practices are quite creditable attempts to cope with transaction costs such as opportunism and asymmetric information. Copublished with the Center for Economic Studies and the Ifo Institute

La teoría de los juegos significa pensar estratégicamente de un modo riguroso. Es el arte de prever los siguientes movimientos de nuestro adversario, saber perfectamente que nuestro rival está tratando de hacer lo mismo que nosotros.Aunque algunas partes de la teoría de los juegos son simplemente de sentido común, otras muchas van en contra de lo que dice la intuición y sólo pueden dominarse desarrollando una nueva manera de ver el mundo. Los autores muestran que casi todas las interacciones económicas y personales tienen un componente de teoría de los juegos utilizando una amplia variedad de casos prácticos de la cultura pop, la TV, el cine, los deportes, la política y la historia.¿Son los ganadores de los concursos de telerrealidad teóricos de los juegos instintivos? ¿Ven los grandes inversores cosas que pasan desapercibidas para la mayoría de la gente? ¿Qué saben los grandes jugadores de póquer que nosotros no sabemos?El dominio de la teoría de los juegos le permitirá al lector tener éxito en los negocios y en la vida, y este ameno libro es la clave para conseguir ese dominio.

Pensar estratégicamente es el arte de ganarle la mano al adversario sabiendo que éste está intentando ganarnos la mano a nosotros. Es un arte de aplicación diaria, fundamentado en unos cuantos principios básicos que constituyen la incipiente ciencia de la estrategia. La premisa de la que parten los autores al escribir este libro es que lectores de procedencias y ocupaciones diversas pueden llegar a ser mejores estrategas si conocen estos principios.