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Are people ever rational? Consider this: You auction off a one-dollar bill to the highest bidder, but you set the rules so that the second highest bidder also has to pay the amount of his last bid, even though he gets nothing. Would people ever enter such an auction? Not only do they, but according to Martin Shubik, the game's inventor, the average winning bid (for a dollar, remember) is $3.40. Many winners report that they bid so high only because their opponent "went completely crazy." This game lies at the intersection of three subjects of eternal fascination: human psychology, morality, and John von Neumann's game theory. Hungarian game-theorist Laszlo Mero introduces us to the basics of game theory, including such concepts as zero-sum games, Prisoner's Dilemma and the origins of altruism; shows how game theory is applicable to fields ranging from physics to politics; and explores the role of rational thinking in the context of many different kinds of thinking. This fascinating, urbane book will interest everyone who wonders what mathematics can tell us about the human condition.

"Will delight and inform anyone who enjoys rigorous thinking and the unexpected conclusions it delivers." -- Jamie Whyte, author of Crimes Against Logic "This ingenious gallop through the mind of Steven Landsburg enables you to think like an economist without incurring a Keynesian headache or a huge student loan. You may even end up 'smarter than Google.' But you will not readily put down this exhilarating adventure in ideas." -- George Gilder, author of Knowledge and Power and Life After Google Can you outsmart an economist? Steven Landsburg, acclaimed author and professor of economics, dares you to try. In this whip-smart, entertaining, and entirely unconventional economics primer, he brings together over one hundred puzzles and brain teasers that illustrate the subject's key concepts and pitfalls. From warm-up exercises to get your brain working, to logic and probability problems, to puzzles covering more complex topics like inferences, strategy, and irrationality, Can You Outsmart an Economist? will show you how to do just that by expanding the way you think about decision making and problem solving. Let the games begin "Entertaining as well as edifying. Read it, expand your mind, and have fun "-- N. Gregory Mankiw, Robert M. Beren Professor of Economics, Harvard University

Recent statistical techniques, including nonlinear programming, have been added to a basic survey of equilibrium systems, comparative statistics, consumer behavior theory, and cost and production theory.

The Handbook of Mathematical Economics aims to provide a definitive source, reference, and teaching supplement for the field of mathematical economics. It surveys, as of the late 1970's the state of the art of mathematical economics. This is a constantly developing field and all authors were invited to review and to appraise the current status and recent developments in their presentations. In addition to its use as a reference, it is intended that this Handbook will assist researchers and students working in one branch of mathematical economics to become acquainted with other branches of this field. Volume 2 elaborates on Mathematical Approaches to Microeconomic Theory , including consumer, producer, oligopoly, and duality theory, as well as Mathematical Approaches to Competitive Equilibrium including such aspects of competitive equilibrium as existence, stability, uncertainty, the computation of equilibrium prices, and the core of an economy. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

This is the first volume of the Handbook of Game Theory with Economic Applications, to be followed by two additional volumes. Game Theory has developed greatly in the last decade, and today it is an essential tool in much of economic theory. The three volumes will cover the fundamental theoretical aspects, a wide range of applications to economics, several chapters on applications to political science, and individual chapters on relations with other disciplines. The topics covered in the present volume include chess-playing computers, an introduction to the non-cooperative theory, repeated games, bargaining theory, auctions, location, entry deterrence, patents, the cooperative theory and its applications, and the relation between Game Theory and ethics. For more information on the Handbooks in Economics series, please see our home page on http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/hes

The book treats two approaches to decision theory: (1) the normative, purporting to determine how a 'perfectly rational' actor ought to choose among available alternatives; (2) the descriptive, based on observations of how people actually choose in real life and in laboratory experiments. The mathematical tools used in the normative approach range from elementary algebra to matrix and differential equations. Sections on different levels can be studied independently. Special emphasis is made on 'offshoots' of both theories to cognitive psychology, theoretical biology, and philosophy.

2014 Reprint of Original 1960 Edition. Exact facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Epistemological Problems" is a milestone in Ludwig von Mises' groundbreaking development of praxeology. This important work contains foundational thoughts on his theory of human action, or "logic of action," which forms the "distinctive methodology of the Austrian School... Mises was not only the major architect and elaborator of this methodology, but also the economist who most fully and successfully applied it to the construction of economic theory" (Rothbard). Mises headed the Austrian School, which "celebrates freedom and the individual, rather than determinism and the collective... and explicitly rejects the idea that the natural sciences provide the proper model for economic analysis" (Shenoy et al., Towards a Theoretical Framework, 19, 19n). In establishing the school's epistemological foundations, Mises first began working on the subject in a series of articles published in the 1920s. He "collected and published them in his seminal philosophical and methodological work, "Grundprobleme der Nationalökonimie" in 1933," which was not translated into English until this edition. Here Mises presents "economics from the point of view of the philosophy of science, and the actual economic analysis of value and inconvertible capital." The first chapter of the book, "The Task and Scope of the Science of Human Action," evolved as the core of the system "Mises had been working on for years... He argued that economic laws were true a priori, on a par with the laws of logic and mathematics... [This] remained one of his most controversial tenets," in that it frames economic theory as addressing "acts of the real world, such as the one that human beings make choices. But the facts of this sort cannot be observed... Economics is not an empirical science in this sense, but it is a science nevertheless." To Mises "the epistemology of economics was not just an idle pastime for ivory tower intellectuals. It was of direct practical relevance." "Epistemological Problems" remains fundamental in establishing the "significance of economic calculation for the architecture of economic science." It is his most powerful and comprehensive elaboration of the span of economic science, arguing that errors of socialism, institutional racism, nationalism and other aspects of human society can be seen as a revolt against the distinctive rationality of economic logic and science. A work that "has lost nothing of its importance... Epistemological Problems contains a considerable amount of discussion that cannot be found in any other of his writings... in particular his critical discussion of the works of those thinkers to whom he felt the greatest intellectual affinity and intellectual debt: Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk and Max Weber" (Hülsmann, Introduction, 2002 edition, 670-671, 948, xxix, lv).

This compact and original exposition of optimal control theory and applications is designed for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in economics. It presents a new elementary yet rigorous proof of the maximum principle and a new way of applying the principle that will enable students to solve any one-dimensional problem routinely. Its unified framework illuminates many famous economic examples and models. This work also emphasizes the connection between optimal control theory and the classical themes of capital theory. It offers a fresh approach to fundamental questions such as: What is income? How should it be measured? What is its relation to wealth? The book will be valuable to students who want to formulate and solve dynamic allocation problems. It will also be of interest to any economist who wants to understand results of the latest research on the relationship between comprehensive income accounting and wealth or welfare.