game-theory-economics Books

This is one of the best books I have read on gambling in a long, ling, time! His style of writing is straightforward and clear and concise. He explains the odds on craps, blackjack and slots in a manner I can understand and apply. I especially appreciated his payoff schedules on each of the games and the strategy on the video games.
One of the few books I have bought that were worth the money!

A great switch from the mundane world of gambling books, this author presents his own personal experiences in a humorous yet professional manner. His own expertise is relayed through statistical and easy to understand information. I would highly recommend this book to any casino regular who is still not confident in their game.

I really enjoyed reading James Crowder's book, Casino Gambling for Fun and Profit. It was very informative and helpful to the beginner and the experienced player. I have read a lot of gambling books, but I was especially impressed with the way Dr. Crowder mixed some humor and some of his own experiences into the book. Anyone can write statistics down, but this book captures my attention and makes for enjoyable reading and learning.

This book would be a very insightful tool to any inexperienced gambler as well as professionals with years of experience. It provides strategic tips and documented accounts of the author's personal research relating to Video Poker and Blackjack. Following this author through his analysis of the sport is quite intriguing. He cleverly uses humor to help paint the true casino atmosphere. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his book, and have monetary proof he knows what he writes.

Casino Gambling for Fun and Profit is extremely informative on the subjects of blackjack and video poker. The amusing stories from the author's past experience holds the readers' attention as well as reinforces the technical explanations. As a novice gambler this book gave me the confidence to play other casino games besides slots and actually walk away a winner.

How do you begin to look at your business "on the horizon"? The company's management team must create a "map" which will lead the organization to it's objectives. Eric will ask you "by the way, do you know what your objectives are?" He really helps you clarify and organize. As Yogi Berra once said "If you don't know where you're going, you're probably going to get there"!

This book is extremely useful for general managers. It has had a profound impact on the way I think about organizations. As authors, Flamholtz and Randle are clear, logical, and practical. As professors, their years of experience as successful strategy consultants translated into one of the best classes I have taken during my MBA years. I highly recommend this book, and will buy it for my friends who are passionate about management.

It is one of the best books that I never read in my life. Well structured, clear, direct to the point. It is the perfect book if you are looking for frames in order to analyze your business. I strongly suggest to all the MBAs.

Not only is this book written in a clear and crisp manner, but the tools described in the book are practical to use and the results easy to interpret.

"In its broadest sense, a game involves procedures or strategies for gaining certain ends. The game of business is to use resources (people, money, ideas, equipment, and tools) to gain certain ends desired by the organization. For a corporation, the objectives of the game are to increase profitability and shareholder value...Whether it is recognized or not, all organizations operate under a 'game plan'. The 'organizational game plan' consists of the basic concept of the game being played as well as the fundamental strategy for playing the game...No matter what game an organization chooses to play or how it chooses to play it, there are certain periods in an organization's life when 'the game' (either the game itself or how it is played) needs to be changed. This occurs when there have been major changes in the economic environment, or some kind of revolution in technology or the nature of competition. It can also happen simply as the result of significant, rapid organizational growth...As used in this book, the phrase, 'changing the game' has a dual meaning. First, it refers to changes in the game being played by an organization. This involves changes in the business an organization is actually in. In addition, the phrase also refers to changes in the way the game is being played (i.e., how a firm operates). Both are major aspects of a business and both can require major transformations, either at different points or even at the same time. These transformations are the focus of this book and define what we mean by 'changing the game'...During the past few years, there has been increasing use of the terms 'transformation' and 'change' in business literature. Some people unfortunatelly use these terms synonymously. That is not the way we will use these terms in this book...Our focus in Changing the Game is on transformation rather than merely incremental changes" (pp.4-9).

In this context, Eric G. Flamholtz and Yvonne Randle:

* describe 'pure' types of transformations, including what they have termed Transformations of the First, Second, and Third Kinds:

1. Entrepreneurial transformations to professional management including the special case of family business transformations - First Kind (more detailed discussion and examples of this kind see Chapter 3).

2. Revitalization transformations of established companies - Second Kind (more detailed discussion and examples of this kind see Chapter 4).

3. Business vision transformations - Third Kind (more detailed discussion and examples of this kind see Chapters 5-6).

and note that actual organizations sometimes engage in compound transformations, consisting of more than one type of transformation simultaneously.

* present a framework that managers can use to understand and plan what must be done to build an organization with a high probability of long-term success, and examine four critical factors that influence the design of a successful business enterprise:

1. The 'business concept' that defines the business a company is in.

2. Six key 'building blocks' of organizational success.

3. The 'size' of the enterprise.

4. The 'environment' (markets, competition, and trends) in which the enterprise will exist.

* focus on the strategic transformational planning process in order to provide a tool for assisting in the process of managing transformations.

* examine how to design an organizational structure that will support a firm's transformation.

* examine the issues involved in transforming an organization's structure after a strategic transformational plan has been developed, and show that the choice of the form of organization to help implement a transformational plan is a strategic issue in itself.

* focus on the behavioral aspects of organizational transformations, and describe the important role leadership plays in not only helping to transform the behavior of individuals within an organization, but in changing the overall game that the organization is playing.

* discuss two additional, powerful tools -performance management systems and corporate culture management- that can be used to transform the behavior of all employees within an organization.

* present ten key lessons for Managing Transformations and Changing the Game.

Finally, they argue that "unlike chess and the NCAA basketball tournament, business is a game without an end. There is no national championship tournament for business. The game goes on and on. In a sense, a basketball program is like a business. A given team may win a championship one year, but there is always the next year and the next and the next, just as in business. As soon as one profitable year is completed, the next emerges. There is, however, one constant in the business game year after year: the need to understand the process of managing organizational transformations. Accordingly, the final lesson is: adapt and increase the probability of future success; or remain fixed in the existing paradigm and risk failure. The game is there for the taking".

I highly recommend.

The author, Johannes Voit, has taught at the University of Bayreuth and University of Freiburg and has experience as a risk manager in the German Savings Banks' Association.

An adequate summary of the material discussed in the book appears on the back cover of the book. I have nothing to add to those comments except that I found that his presentation brought cohesion to a subject matter which, seems to me to be, fragmented and plagued by assumptions.

There is a great review online titled, "Statistical Phynance" by another author. It's on the American Scientist website. That is a great review.

I am an investment consultant but my undergrad work was physics and math (I also have a finance mba and have passed a few actuarial exams). I will admit I was a top student in both disciplines (math and physics) at very selective school, and Voit's exploration is not for the easily deterred. I'm sure most people who read this book are much smarter than me--after all, it's a physics text--but I make these comments to be helpful to those wandering over from other disciplines. I only wish I had the time to delve deeply into the subject matter, because that is what this text deserves. As it is, I can read it as an essay and rely on my background in statistics/physics/probability/finance for the intuition required to understand the author's analysis and conclusions--to an extent.

This book has me excited about the possible practical applications in my work; to be frank, I think it's revolutionary. But that's just me coming from my little corner of the world.

I am a physics grad student thinking about switching to finance. This book is a good start on that path.

Very useful book, particularly in what concerns alternative L-Stable distributions. True, not too versed in financial theory but I'd rather see the author erring on the side of more physics than mathematical economics. As an author I don't ask much from books, just to deliver what they indend. This one does.

Clear historical description of Einstein/Bachelier. Hopefully one day we will call derivatives pricing the Bachelier valuation.

The book in short provides an excellent perspective on the statistical approach to asset price dynamics. Very clear and to the point.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

This book was my first thorough introduction to this field and I have found it thoroughly enjoyable. The comparisions between the tools of Physics and Finance along with the presentation of empirical data was highly stimulating. The economic terms were presented with lucidity and conciseness and the use of relevant examples in both Physics and Finance made it an easy read. Also of great value was it comparisons of standard economic theory with various tools within Physics.

This book also provides a very complete Bibliography where one can find classical and neoclassical economic texts and further references and directions in this relatively new field. I highly reccomend it to any Physicist looking to go into Finance or just as a good read and also to (neo) classical econonomists and financial engineers alike.

I also deeply appreciated the respect it showed to economists and its straightforward, non preachy manner that many Physicists are often guilty of!

Thanks

Bits of this are dated - the publishers date now is 2005 but I think it is really closer to 2000 or so - the opening sentence is "AOL is the largest internet company" etc. Uh, google? But regardless, the book is like a compact encyclopedia of strategy and includes a fair bit of economics and even (fairly straightforward) formulas. If you need the formula for the (theoretic) ideal price of a monopoly product, you can find it here in five seconds.

McAfee presents the issues facing modern businesses with subtleties and explanations that are essential for maneuvering intelligently in a complex competitive environment.

Instead of merely dumbing down the ideas to simplistic charts, the book lucidly explains the best modern thinking from economics and how it relates to real business situations. The author, one of the leading American experts in business economics, is well-suited to the task, since he is co-edited the top journal in the discipline for a decade. Nevertheless, he never loses sight of the practical issues and the text is packed with (a seemingly endless array) of fascinating practical examples.

The writing is clear, punchy, and often funny.

If you want to get an accessible, useful view of business economics that is much deeper than what is offered to the typical MBA, this book is a must.

The best description I can come up with is "MBA in a book." However I think that title has been applied to many books of much less quality so I need something better.

McAffee provides an "in-depth introduction" to business economics, including competition (as the name implies), pricing strategy, statistics, industry analysis, organizational design, incentives, and more. For anyone looking to get their feet wet in business, or just to understand what the marketing and business guys are talking about (or think they're talking about), this book is excellent!

If you're looking for a fluffly book with executive summaries, this is not the book for you. If you want a book packed with content that will improve your nascent business acumen, this is it.

This is a terrific book which provides a wide range of strategies relating to business today. The best way to describe this book is as a sort of Art of War for business strategists (although Professor McAfee is quick to point out that war in business as in other areas should be engaged in sparingly if at all). Perhaps most impressive about the book is that McAfee is able to present several solutions to one problem and present to the reader how these solutions would play out in the real world: take for example his discussion of the variety of auction formats available for businesses or the bargaining solutions available for negotiations between a union and a large corporation. This book is also loaded with poignant examples from business throughout this century. Particularly useful in this book is McAfee's discussion about industrial analysis: this chapter would be useful for any manager who wants to know what forces (new entrants, buyer bargaining power, supplier bargaining power, substitute products, rivalry, and complements) should be kept in mind when making business decisions. McAfee has written a terrific book and has every reason to believe his book indeed fulfills a niche before neglected by writers.

Joel Watson has done a terrific job introducing game theory. Beware- game theory is not for the light hearted, this book does contain some very dense mathematical proofs etc. The hardest part of the book is understanding the mathematical proofs for the main ideas of game theory. Once the mathematical foundation has been layed down it is very easy to follow the main concepts such as nash equilibrium, bargaining solutions, etc. Watson writes in a very relaxed and informal fashion, which is very refreshing. If your professor requires this book for class you should not worry, this is one of the best books on the market.

As far as economics textbooks go, this one is very readable. Its treatment of the subject is clear and reasonably rigorous on the undergraduate level. The author is also quite witty.

Really book for game theory and contract theory. The author does a really good job of explaining the theory with examples that are easy to understand.

Comment to the last review: This book is an excllent txbook, especially when the prof teaching this class is Joel Watson himself. Very interesting prof he is.
The book is very useful and easy to follow.

The book is excellent for teaching approximation algorithms. The book was new, but I benefit of a reduced price (probably promotional).

This book is a great sequel to Garey and Johnson. The appendix of this book gives a list of all NP optimisation problems together with their current approximability (or inapproximability results) in a Garey Johnson fashion.

Developing approximation algorithms for NP hard problems is now a very active field in Mathematical Programming and Theoretical Computer Science. There have been a number of exciting developments like semidefinite programming , the Goemans Williamson algorithm for max cut et al.

On the other hand, from a theoretical computer science point of view, we now have a proof that many of these problems cannot have polynomial approximation algorithms unless P=NP.

This book provides an excellent introduction to both areas. A worthy supplement to Garey and Johnson, Papadimitriou's books on combinatorial optimisation and computational complexity, Hochbaum's book on approximation algorithms, Alon and Spencer's book on the probabilistic method and finally Motwani and Raghavan's book on randomised algorithms.

This book is a great sequel to Garey and Johnson. The appendix of this book gives a list of all NP optimisation problems together with their current approximability (or inapproximability results) in a Garey Johnson fashion.

Developing approximation algorithms for NP hard problems is now a very active field in Mathematical Programming and Theoretical Computer Science. There have been a number of exciting developments like semidefinite programming , the Goemans Williamson algorithm for max cut et al.

On the other hand, from a theoretical computer science point of view, we now have a proof that many of these problems cannot have polynomial approximation algorithms unless P=NP.

This book provides an excellent introduction to both areas. A worthy supplement to Garey and Johnson, Papadimitriou's books on combinatorial optimisation and computational complexity, Hochbaum's book on approximation algorithms, Alon and Spencer's book on the probabilistic method and finally Motwani and Raghavan's book on randomised algorithms.

Voting systems are quirkier than we generally knew. Good insight into what works and what the problems are.

Steven Brams and Alan Taylor accomplish something quite interesting and worth paying attention to. They move concepts traditionally treated in policy debate and law with simple hit-or-miss human judgment and discretion into concrete analyzable mathematical processes. In the more than ten years that I've worked on the mathematics of child support, I have not yet been so convincing that such a transformation from subjective into objective is possible. Let the games continue!

Roger F. Gay, Project Leader Project for the Improvement of Child Support Litigation Technology http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/5910/index.html

This was easily the book I referred to most in my Master's paper on fair division. It covers a lot of topics, including envy-free and equitable division, fair division by auctions, and fair division by elections. The authors devote a chapter to their favorite method, the so-called "combined procedure" that is equitable, envy-free, and Pareto-optimal for two players and would be invaluable to any divorce lawyer.

For those accustomed to reading mathematics or economics, this book is readable. For the layperson, it might be a little bit too technical in spots. While it has many practical examples, it isn't really a fair division manual for the do-it-yourselfer. But it's as close as you're going to get, for now.

Last semester, I had to take a graduate level economics course having never even taken intermediate economics. (My program has weird requirements.) The book used in the class was Varian's Microeconomic Analysis. I can't say whether that was a good or bad book for someone with much more preparation. But for me, it was totally incomprehensible since I hadn't come across any of that stuff before.

On the recommendations of others, I checked out Nicholson's book, hoping it would give me the background needed to just pass the class. I found Nicholson's book to be disappointing, with many derivations stuck in footnotes. I should, however, mention, that the Nicholson copy I was given was of an older edition, so I'm not sure if the newer editions are better.

Anyway, I was feeling so desperate and by chance came across this book in the library. That day, my semester took a huge turn for the better. I finally could solve optimization problems! I finally understood the derivation of the Slutsky equation! Mathis and Kocianski explain everything SO clearly. Furthermore, they give you "cookbook recipes" for how to solve many of the problems you're likely to get on exams and homeworks. The problems I had to solve for homework and on exams were much more complicated, but the complicated part was in the details. The basic process to solve the problems was actually the same as the examples in the Mathis book. Once you master that process with Mathis's examples, you can generalize it to harder and more complicated problems.

Mathis and Koscianski also show you how the problem of the consumer is not unlike the problem of the firm, and problems of general equilibrium simply combine the two. In other words, they do a great job of showing the bigger picture while still teaching you the math involved.

Speaking of the math, this book requires calculus, unlike most intermediate textbooks. Yet the material is so clearly presented that I find the derivations to be easier to follow than in many intermediate textbooks. Furthermore, the authors don't unnecessarily complicate things by overloading on notation.

This is a very special book. Nowadays, most introductory textbooks on microeconomics teach intuitions and models that are carefully designed to avoid the use of even basic calculus as much as possible. This is not necessarily a bad thing because most college students don't have much calculus. However, for those that have even a basic understanding of calculus, there is a lot to be gained by studying basic microeconomics using mathematical tools.

This is the rare introductory text specifically designed to teach using calculus. This is refreshing and can be quite exciting for advanced high school students, undergraduates, and even masters candidates who would like to use math to be introduced to utility theory, consumer optimization, market demand curves, demand elasticities, short and long run production issues, firm optimization, short and long run costs of production, market structures including monopoly, issues related to input markets, and equilibrium analysis.

Really, the use of math here does aid understanding. The writing is clear, the illustrations are helpful, and the equations are quite understandable even if you only have calc 1 in your repertoire.

Take a look, I think you will like it and get real value from it.

When I took intermediate microeconomics I was assigned Microeconomics by Hal Varian, which from what I gather is the predominate book used by professors, however it shouldn't be. This book is a far better handling of intermediate micro than is the Varian book, or any others that I've seen for that matter. Most undergraduate books that I have seen shy away from using calculus to explain the theories, which is really unfortunate because calculus makes this fascinating field far less cumbersome and much more accessible. The first two chapters on reviewing calculus for economics are great and really help clarify the relevance of calculus to economics. I find that utilizing calc makes microeconomics a much easier field to understand and this book does that very well. The only complaint is that I have noticed a few errors here and there, like mislabeled graphs or a few misreferences to the wrong graphical explanations, but it is easy enough to realize from the context, it would be nice if these weren't there, but overall this is the best book for microeconomic theory I have seen.

For several years now, a group of social scientists has been studying the human tendency to be socially fair rather than narrowly selfish. The editors of this volume--Herbert Gintis, Samuel Bowles, Robert Boyd, and Ernst Fehr--are among the stalwarts; others are found among the authors of the book's chapters.
The core of this long-running effort is Fehr's experiments with the ultimatum game, in which two people must share a sum of money (say, $10); Person A gets to propose a split, Person B can only accept or decline. Economists and politicians would expect every game to wind up with a $9.99/$0.01 split (or actually a 9-1 split, since bills are used), but in fact typical splits are more like 5-5 or 6-4, and in one place (Lamalera, Indonesia) people actually split something like 4-6, few A's ever claiming even half the money. This long-running set of experiments around the world adds to a vast, rapidly accumulating set of data showing that people are sociable, not "rational" in the folk-economic sense (i.e., dedicated solely to narrow material self-interest). The present book discusses the implications for economics and politics. If people are naturally concerned with fairness, narrowly economistic policies can be counterproductive; we all know cases of "crowding out," in which a material incentive actually makes people act worse, by crowding out moral incentives. If you reward people for being good, they will think it's all a cynical game, and will act worse. Punitive legislation to make people do what they do anyway (for moral reasons) is also counterproductive. Imagine what these realizations would do to American social policy.
The problem with this book is that it is too optimistic and upbeat. The downside of human sociability is confined to one page, late in the book (p. 388), where racism, honor killing, and the like get a quick mention. Alas, the morning radio brings a stream of accounts not only of such things but also of religious butchery all over the world--Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and even Buddhists (theoretically prohibited from killing but busily genocidal). This brings us back to Adam Smith's suggestion that greed may not be lovable but may be better than the noble, virtuous alternatives. I hope Gintis et al work on how to decouple fairness and interpersonal concern from the desire to exterminate everybody who is not in one's immediate social set. Until this is done, the hope purveyed in this work will remain thin.
The authors note that humans seem genetically programmed to have at least some sense of fairness and of self-sacrifice for the common good, but they wisely refrain from trying to unpack "hereditary" and "environmental" or "cultural" aspects. Heredity makes us do this, and learn it easily, and heredity gives us the ability to learn and develop cultures. No way to unpack. Still, more needs to be done on just how flexible these inborn moralities are. The range from Lamalera to certain parts of South America is pretty great. So is the range of murderousness in religious and ethnic settings. We need to know how to modify human behavior in these regards, and how much we can hope for.
That being said, this book is the best yet in the long list of books that devastate the selfish-individualist model of human behavior. People desperately want to be sociable, and be good members of their society. This may lead them to fairness and generosity, or to body-piercing, or to suicide bombing. This book offers hope for building new societies through use of innate human decency. At this point in time, any book seriously offering such hope is desirable.

Moral Sentiments and Material Interests: The Foundations of Cooperation in Economic Life (Economic Learning and Social Evolution) combinds the theory of cultural evolution ala Boyd and Richerson (and Henrich et al) and the behavioral economy by people like Gintis, Bowles and Fehr. The book works further based on the theory - develops e.g. models for a better social policy etc.

Book discusses an issue which is very central for "being a human being" - co-operation. Book is very informative, very well written even if there are many writers with heterogenous background. Also after the book you kind of get more optimistic about the prospects of humananity.

I am without any formal education in antropology, biology and economics but have read "everything" by Boyd and Richerson - my understanding on economics is based on Microeconomics by Samuel Bowles.

The book was to me a good further reading after the Bowles Microeconomics book. But the book can be read even by someone who does not know about economics even that much as me. The book is not too formal - easy to read actually.

This book is just really great. The literature on fairness and reciprocity in social science is growing fast, and this book is ideal to give you a flavour of why this is such a good thing. It is diverse, with entries ranging from biological models that attempt to explain the evolution of reciprocity, through the implications of reciprocity for the way legal sanctions work, to the political philosophy of the dark side of clan mentality.
Most readers will probably not want to read everything, and even less people will agree with everything. One needs to remember that a lot of the stuff in this book is still controversial, including the existence of (strong) reciprocity, but this is what makes it so very interesting. And if only half of what's in this book is right, it is still revolutionary.
In 10 years, this book will be terribly outdated. But for now, it is the best thing you can get if you are interested in the interplay between evolution, reciprocity and social order, and the fundamental questions of social science that it entails.

This is a wonderful book for serious practitioners and students of negotiation. It covers the negotiation waterfront so completely that this reader -- who is also a writer and negotiation prof -- is left wondering what more can be said on the subject. Unlike most pop negotiation books, this tome drills deep into qualitative and quantitative approaches to structuring and analyzing simple and complex negotiation situations. The quality of the writing is superb. The author's insights are profound, informed by years of experience in the field. The quantitative discussion can be a bit intimidating, especially to math-challenged readers. But even without the quantitiave material, it's well worth the price of admission.

This book has a real wow factor. I was amazed at how much ground it covers - game theory, pscyhology, decision analysis, negotiation stuff. There's a great balance of technical help with easy-to-read conversations between hypothetical negotiators making the tricky concepts easier to understand. You probably won't want to read it from cover-to-cover but every chapter has really useful insights on how to negotiate better with positive or negative counterparts.

This is a rich and complete book that touches all aspects of negotiation. The subtitle "The science and art of collaborative decision making" is might be even a better descriptor of the contents. The book has a certain scholar touch and is with 600 pages really comprehensive and more to be used as a reference than to be read in one sitting. For those that are more interested in a shorter book, "Co-opetition" might be a faster to read alternative that is quite in line with this book.

Professor Raiffa shows that negotiations and how to approach them depend mainly in how the structure of the negatiation is eg. integrative vs distributive. He proposes a very structured way to approach negotiations, being good prepared and looking for alternatives to an agreement before to have the freedom to forfeit the negotiation. Once meeting being creative working together with the other party helps to find those spots that are valued differently by the parties and offer possibility of common gains. Whether always the described Full Open Truthfull Exchange (FOTE) is possible might be doubted but it gives at least the yardstick how things could be. The author compares often diverse solutions and how the merit of each of them varies depending the criteria used, and what fairness in each case might be.

The book is divided in major themes that are gone through in detail, any of those can be read in an almost independent manner, without following the order in the book.
Part I. Fundamentals describes the basics of the books and what is the approach followed to structure negotiations. The Game Theory chapter is in itself an excellent summary on the theme and a nice introduction for those that never have been exposed earlier to the subject.
Part II. Two Party Distributive (Win-Lose) Negotiations. The type of negotiation we all think about as example is explained with plenty of details and examples, including a chapter on the particular case which are auctions.
Part III. Two Party Integrative (Win-Win) Negotiations. This is the second type of negotiation we think of. There are several exmaples of different problem types one can find, some as the repartition of goods has many practical applications for the majority of people in rela life situations and gives very practical insights.
Part IV. External Help. Describes what professional help can do for you in a negotiation, and what you ahould take into account before asking for help.
Part V. Many parties. Shows the complexity of negotiations of any type when a major number and how in that occasion agreements can be drafted.

In all chapters there are plenty of examples and information how people react in laboratory situations coming from the which gives the best approximation of real situations develop. Each chapter is closed with a summary of the core concepts which helps when one wants to review the book.

With the comprehensiveness of the book few things are missing or could have been mentioned additionally. The book has plenty of examples but I missed some exercises for the reader to prepare for the diverse points in each chapter. Two small misses that could be easily arranged are how to use decision trees to help finding alternatives and to mention some of the nice software packages that help to simulate random variables that affect decisions, eg Crystallball.