Objectives

The purpose of this course is to make masters students at UNIL acquainted with the basic solution concepts used to solve games, namely:

Dominance, Iterated Deletion of Dominated Strategies, Rationalizability, Nash Equilibrium, Backward Induction, Subgame Perfect Equilibrium, Bayesian Nash Equilibrium, and Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium.

In addition, the course also discusses various ways to refine the solutions concepts in order to come up with more precise predictions in settings with multiple equilibria.

At the end of the course, topics from cooperative game theory will be discussed, e.g., matching markets and market design.

Contents

Static Games of Complete Information, Dominance, Rationalizability

Static Games of Complete Information, Nash Equilibrium

Static Games of Complete Information, Mixed-Strategy Nash

Dynamic Games of Complete Information, Multi-Stage Games

Dynamic Games of Complete Information, Infinitely-Repeated Games

Static Games of Incomplete Information

Dynamic Games of Incomplete Information

Cooperative Game Theory

Matching Markets and Market Design

References

Main Book: Steve Tadelis, Game Theory: An Introduction, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.

plus material posted on moodle page.

Pre-requisites

The skills and knowledge of the HEC MScE microeconomics course are required.

Evaluation

First attempt

Exam:

Written 3h00 hours

Documentation:

Not allowed

Calculator:

Allowed with restrictions

Evaluation:

If exam takes place on site: written exam, 3 hours, closed-book, max{(25% bonus grade + 75% final exam grade), final exam grade}, only non-programmable calculators are allowed.

[The final grade is split in terms of topics as follows: 2/3 non-cooperative game theory (Gizatulina) and 1/3 cooperative-game theory (Klaus).]

Retake

Exam:

Written 3h00 hours

Documentation:

Not allowed

Calculator:

Allowed with restrictions

Evaluation:

Rattrapage, if it takes place on site: written exam, 3 hours, closed-book (100%), only non-programmable calculators are allowed.

[The final grade is split in terms of topics as follows: 2/3 non-cooperative game theory (Gizatulina) and 1/3 cooperative-game theory (Klaus).]