Avinash K. Dixit - Böcker

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.

* 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.

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 outmaneuvering 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.

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.

Economics and fiction often pursue parallel objectives. Economists analyze human decisions and interactions in markets and other institutions. Fiction writers also provide keen insights into individual minds and motives, examining how their characters respond to conflict and tensions in varied situations. This book explores the insights to be gained from developing this parallel.In each chapter, economists discuss classic or contemporary literary creations, exploring economic incentives that motivate the characters, the economic mechanisms that tie them together, and/or the economic context in which they live and develop. Exploring the synergy across economics and literature offers new understandings of themes, including capitalism and colonialism, marriage and markets, gender norms, inheritance and estates, and the political economy of poverty. The broad and deep range of literary works includes writers from Shakespeare and Goethe, through Chekov and Steinbeck, to recent Nobelists Abdulrazak Gurnah and Han Kang. By offering new understandings of both economics and literature, readers will gain deeper insights into people’s thought processes, choices, and consequences.This book will captivate readers in economics, social sciences, and the humanities and open their minds to the viewing of economic ideas and concepts through the prism of great works of literature.

Economics and fiction often pursue parallel objectives. Economists analyze human decisions and interactions in markets and other institutions. Fiction writers also provide keen insights into individual minds and motives, examining how their characters respond to conflict and tensions in varied situations. This book explores the insights to be gained from developing this parallel.In each chapter, economists discuss classic or contemporary literary creations, exploring economic incentives that motivate the characters, the economic mechanisms that tie them together, and/or the economic context in which they live and develop. Exploring the synergy across economics and literature offers new understandings of themes, including capitalism and colonialism, marriage and markets, gender norms, inheritance and estates, and the political economy of poverty. The broad and deep range of literary works includes writers from Shakespeare and Goethe, through Chekov and Steinbeck, to recent Nobelists Abdulrazak Gurnah and Han Kang. By offering new understandings of both economics and literature, readers will gain deeper insights into people’s thought processes, choices, and consequences.This book will captivate readers in economics, social sciences, and the humanities and open their minds to the viewing of economic ideas and concepts through the prism of great works of literature.