Games of Strategy [Hardcover]

Avinash K. Dixit (Author), Susan Skeath (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393974219 | ISBN-13: 978-0393974218 | Publication Date: June 1999

This is an introductory textbook in game theory, a topic which is increasingly part of the undergraduate curriculum in economics courses.

Editorial Reviews

Review

A marvelous book! Every topic is right on target, and the exposition is extraordinary. You can count me among the many people who will find it the best undergraduate text on the subject. -- Vincent Crawford, University of California-San Diego

Dixit and Skeath recognize the possibility of teaching the concepts of game theory at the earliest stages of the undergraduate curriculum; this is very progressive and praiseworthy. Using Games of Strategy, students everywhere--budding military strategists at Annapolis and economic theorists in training at Chicago alike--will be able to enjoy an early introduction to the field. The generous variety of illustrative specific cases has the effect that what is learned can be more easily retained than if there were only the assertion of theoretical concepts without enlightening examples. -- John F. Nash jr., Princeton University, Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences

Games of Strategy provides a marvelous introduction to game theory. It is full of engaging examples drawn from economics, political science, and other areas. This book would serve very well as the core text for a nontechnical game theory course in political science departments. -- Robert Powell, University of California-Berkeley

I have long thought that an elementary game theory text was a great idea, and I have reviewed a number of book proposals and manuscripts by economists hoping to produce such a book. Games of Strategy is super, both in its initial objectives and in its execution of them. -- Amanda Bayer, Swarthmore College

Thanks very much for allowing me to use the draft version of Games of Strategy, by Avinash Dixit and Susan Skeath. It is a superb book, probably the best text that I have used in my twelve years as a college professor. My sense is that it quickly will become the most widely used nontechnical introduction to game theory. It is extremely well done. -- Larry Evans, College of William and Mary

To know game theory is to change your lifetime way of thinking. Games of Strategy is a delightful skeleton key to the twenty-first century's emerging culture. -- Paul A. Samuelson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Nobel Laureate, Economic Sciences

About the Author

Avinash K. Dixit is John J.F. Sherrerd University Professor of Economics at Princeton University, where he offers his popular freshman course in game theory. He is among the world’s leading economists, having made fundamental contributions in several major fields, including Game Theory. He is world famous. He is the author of many books, including Thinking Strategically (Norton, 1991), Investment Under Uncertainty (Princeton UP, 1994), and The Art of Strategy (Norton, 2009).

David H. Reiley, Jr. is Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona. He is also a researcher at Yahoo! Research and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He previously taught at Vanderbilt and Northwestern. Reiley is well known for his use of field experiments in economic research.


Susan Skeath is Professor of Economics at Wellesley College, where she teaches a number of courses in microeconomics, including the game theory course she introduced into the school’s curriculum. Professor Skeath conducts research in international trade theory, and earned her doctorate at Princeton University. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 600 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (Np) (June 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393974219
• ISBN-13: 978-0393974218
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,220 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Avinash K. Dixit is John J.F. Sherrerd University Professor of Economics at Princeton University, where he offers his popular freshman course in game theory. He is among the world's leading economists, having made fundamental contributions in several major fields, including Game Theory. He is world famous. He is the author of many books, including "Thinking Strategically" (Norton, 1991), "Investment Under Uncertainty" (Princeton UP, 1994), and "The Art of Strategy" (Norton, 2009).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 78 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Why won't anyone just call it the Battle of the Sexes?, August 24, 2000

By 

John M. Woodruff (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Games of Strategy (Hardcover)

I used this book for the second half of a principles of micro. course, to supplement the shoddy, one-chapter-on-the-Prisoners'-Dilemma treatment found in most principles textbooks. Everything said here should be interepreted according to this. From this instructor, the book gets points for being the best one available for teaching low-level undergraduates, but it could have been a LOT better. For example:

The notation and terminology are in many cases non-standard, and tend to change from chapter to chapter. The BoS is the Battle of Cultures (though this is not the first book to mess with this game). Chicken is a Game of Assurances, except in Ch. 10. SPE are (quasi-)formally described in Ch. 6, but they are actually introduced in Ch.4, where they are called Rollback Equilibria. Many times, I would have to tell students, "this is what your book calls a..."

The authors use confusing and convoluted examples to motivate concepts. For example, it takes a confusing, two-page story about advertizing in a political race to motivate study of sequential-move games. A simple entry-deterrence story gets the point across.

Also on this point, sequential-move games appear before simultaneous-move ones. I reversed this, in part ot be able to show that the set of SPE is merely a subset of the set of NE (again, using the entry-deterrence story). In fact, there's no real attempt to relate many of (seemingly unrelated) concepts to one another, as equilibrium refinements, each of which conforms to some intuitive concept of the "right" way of playing a given game.

The disucssion of the special case of two-person, zero-sum games, introducing pre-Nash notation and solution concepts is merely confusing for the uninitiated. I see no reason that anyone not yet in graduate school should have to know the min-max theorem.

In some ways, the books seems to suffer from over- and under-reach at the same time. The subject of infinitely repeated games gets two pages on TFT and Grim strategies in a repeated Prisoners' Dilema. There's no real discussion of rationalizability, or Bayesian games; many important concepts are smooshed into a couple of chapters, like they're being swept under the rug. There IS, however, a chapter on evolutionary games, and a (math-free) chapter on auctions.

Again, these are points that, I think, led to undue confusion, and required undue effort to counteract. However, I don't mean to be unduly harsh. I'm not suggesting that the authors should merely have mimeographed Fudenberg & Tirole, and whited-out the math. This is a useful book, ahead (as far as I know) of other treatments appropriate for students at this level. But it could have been much better.

33 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars From a student perspective, December 8, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Games of Strategy (Hardcover)

I used this book as a student in an undergraduate Game Theory course and have mixed feelings about it.

Positives: the book is written in a simple style with relatively good examples that promote conceptual understanding.

Negatives: the book is very poorly laid out. Some chapters don't seem to follow any logical progression, so the reader must frequently jump from one section to another. Additionally, the book doesn't utilize some fairly standard terms, and the index doesn't facilitate the book's use as a reference manual.

The reason I wrote this review was because I came online to try to find a better Game Theory textbook -- I ran into problem studying from this one.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Starter, October 2, 2003

By 

Erik (Singapore) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Games of Strategy (Hardcover)

I'm learning game theory on my own and found this book an excellent starter. The book provides a wide range of topics, building from what strategy means in game theory, to the sequential and simultanous play of games, to more specialized areas and applications of the theory.

Although it keeps the mathematics rather minimal, you'll need to do your own workings to better understand the text. To get more from this book, you'll need to be involved in the examples the book provides... breezing through may not help you understand the theory better.

While I do read other books on game theory, I find myself going back to Games of Strategy to review the basics and the examples. The example on the tennis game has provided me some starting ideas on the issues I've to face in some research areas I'm working on.