Ebook: Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

Cover; CONTENTS; PREFACE; TECHNICAL NOTE; ACKNOWLEDGMENT; CHAPTER I: FORMULATION OF THE ECONOMIC PROBLEM; 1. THE MATHEMATICAL METHOD IN ECONOMICS; 1.1. Introductory remarks; 1.2. Difficulties of the application of the mathematical method; 1.3. Necessary limitations of the objectives; 1.4. Concluding remarks; 2. QUALITATIVE DISCUSSIOIN OF THE PROBLEM OF RATIONAL BEHAVIOR; 2.1. The problem of rational behavior; 2.2. "" Robinson Crusoe"" economy and social exchange economy; 2.3. The number of variables and the number of participants; 2.4. The case of many participants: Free competition.;This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has si.