This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, 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 since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.

All individuals who operate in the business sphere, whether as consumers, employers, employees, entrepreneurs, or financial traders to name a few constituents, share a common biological heritage and are defined by a universal human nature. As such, it is surprising that so few business scholars have incorporated biological and evolutionary-informed theories within their conceptual toolboxes. This edited book addresses this lacuna by culling chapters at the intersection of the evolutionary behavioral sciences and specific business contexts including in marketing, consumer behavior, advertising, innovation and creativity, intertemporal choice, negotiations, competition and cooperation in organizational settings, sex differences in workplace patterns, executive leadership, business ethics, store design, behavioral decision making, and electronic communication. To reword the famous aphorism of T. G. Dobzhansky, nothing in business makes sense except in the light of evolution.

A "lively" memoir by the Hollywood legend about the making of Spartacus , with a foreword by George Clooney ( Los Angeles Times ). One of the world's most iconic movie stars, Kirk Douglas has distinguished himself as a producer, philanthropist, and author of ten works of fiction and memoir. Now, more than fifty years after the release of his enduring epic Spartacus , Douglas reveals the riveting drama behind the making of the legendary gladiator film. Douglas began producing the movie in the midst of the politically charged era when Hollywood's moguls refused to hire anyone accused of Communist sympathies. In a risky move, Douglas chose Dalton Trumbo, a blacklisted screenwriter, to write Spartacus . Trumbo was one of the "Unfriendly Ten," men who had gone to prison rather than testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee about their political affiliations. Douglas's source material was already a hot property, as the novel Spartacus was written by Howard Fast while he was in jail for defying HUAC. With the financial future of his young family at stake, Douglas plunged into a tumultuous production both on- and off-screen. As both producer and star of the film, he faced explosive moments with young director Stanley Kubrick, struggles with a leading lady, and negotiations with giant personalities, including Sir Laurence Olivier, Charles Laughton, Peter Ustinov, and Lew Wasserman. Writing from his heart and from his own meticulously researched archives, Kirk Douglas, at ninety-five, looks back at his audacious decisions. He made the most expensive film of its era--but more importantly, his moral courage in giving public credit to Trumbo effectively ended the notorious Hollywood blacklist. A master storyteller, Douglas paints a vivid and often humorous portrait in I Am Spartacus! The book is enhanced by newly discovered period photography of the stars and filmmakers both on and off the set.

A titan of modern media, Sumner Redstone shares how he became the head of one of the world’s great media empires and one of the richest men in the entertainment business. In one of the most fascinating and eye-opening business autobiographies written, Sumner Redstone shares the unvarnished story of how he overcame significant obstacles on his trek to build a vast media and entertainment engine. A Passion to Win gives a riveting look behind the scenes at the highly charged negotiations that won Redstone both Viacom and Paramount, revealing the intense business calculations and strong emotions of Redstone’s head-to-head confrontations with adversaries such as Barry Diller and H. Wayne Huizenga. In a book that shows readers what it takes to win, Redstone shares the rollercoaster journey that led him to become the head of a wildly successful company and the mind behind the revolution of the video industry.

Bearing on fundamental issues of economic theory, history, and public policy, this volume elaborates and goes beyond themes enunciated in W. W. Rostow's previous works. The eight essays presented here are unified by the author's insistence that neo-Keynesian and neoclassical theory are an inadequate basis for economic analysis and policy prescription. Changes in technology and in the supply of energy, food, and raw materials, he contends, must be taken into account. The scale and character of the investments required to respond to these changes link his analysis back to conventional income analysis. Rostow outlines in several contexts the framework for a general, disaggregated theory of production and prices that meets this criterion. The theoretical and historical essays include a review and unification of various long-cycle theories; a formal mathematical model of the Kondratieff cycle; a review of theories relating technology and the price system, including Rostow's own formulation of the appropriate linkage; a lengthy analysis of the pre-1914 relation between money and prices, including a detailed critique of modern monetarist interpretations; and an analysis of the proposition that economic growth assumes an S-shaped path of acceleration and deceleration. The policy essays include an examination of the links between energy-related investment, full employment, and patterns of regional development in the United States; the discussion of an appropriate framework and procedure for North-South international economic negotiations; and the text of a 1965 talk on inflation that touches on the relations among economics, economists, and the performance of societies as a whole.

Where you are in life today is the result of all of the past decisions which you have made or which have been made for you in response to the various situations and events, both expected and unexpected, that have impacted your life. The decisions that you will make from this point forward will determine the degree to which your future will be positive or negative. "Decision Time!" describes the subjective and multi-variable nature of real life decisions and demonstrates techniques for making complex decisions with ease and insight. "Decision Time!" provides guidance for many different decision-making situations with both personal and business aspects. Topics with examples from life include games, negotiation, the challenge of financing a college education, starting a small business, purchasing/shopping, family relationships, getting the government to listen to you, investments, and many more. "Decision Time!" gives you insight into the decision-making process as applied to both small and large choices you will face. It includes dynamic aspects, cultural effects, and morality as applied to decision-making for individuals, teams, and societies. "Decision Time!" prepares you to face the continuous impact of decision situations confidently and without hesitation.

Bargaining and Group Decision Making: Experiments in Bilateral Monopoly is a book written by Sidney Siegel that explores the dynamics of bargaining and decision-making in situations of bilateral monopoly. The book is based on a series of experiments conducted by the author, which involve pairs of players negotiating over the allocation of a fixed resource. The experiments are designed to test various theories of bargaining and decision-making, and to investigate the effects of different factors on the outcomes of negotiations.The book begins with an introduction to the concept of bilateral monopoly, which refers to a situation in which there is only one buyer and one seller of a particular good or service. The author then outlines the various theories of bargaining that have been proposed over the years, including the Nash bargaining solution, the Rubinstein bargaining model, and the Kalai-Smorodinsky bargaining solution.The remainder of the book is devoted to a detailed description of the experiments conducted by the author. These experiments involve pairs of players who are given a fixed amount of money and are asked to negotiate over how to divide it between them. The author varies a number of different factors in the experiments, such as the initial endowments of the players, the timing of the negotiations, and the presence or absence of a third-party mediator.The results of the experiments are analyzed in detail, and the author draws a number of conclusions about the dynamics of bargaining and decision-making in situations of bilateral monopoly. The book is written in a clear and accessible style, and is suitable for anyone interested in the topics of bargaining, decision-making, and game theory.This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the old original and may contain some imperfections such as library marks and notations. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions, that are true to their original work.

During the height of the Cold War, between 1965 and 1968, Robert Aumann, Michael Maschler, and Richard Stearns collaborated on researchon the dynamics of arms control negotiations that has since become foundational to work on repeated games. These five seminal papers are collected here for the first time, with the addition of "postscripts" describing many of the developments since the papers were written. During the height of the Cold War, between 1965 and 1968, Robert Aumann, Michael Maschler, and Richard Stearns collaborated on research on the dynamics of arms control negotiations that has since become foundational to work on repeated games. These five seminal papers are collected here for the first time, with the addition of "postscripts" describing many of the developments since the papers were written. The basic model studied throughout the book is one in which players ignorant about the game being played must learn what they can from the actions of the others. The original work, done under contract to the United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, was intended to tackle the gradual disarmament problem, in which neither player knew what his own payoff would be for any given agreement, because of uncertainty about the other side's arsenal and weapons production technology. But the research soon became much more generalized, covering information concealment and revelation, signaling and learning, and related ideas in any repeated competitive situation. The first four chapters of the book treat the competitive zero-sum side of the theory of repeated games. Chapter five takes up cooperative phenomena where one player may want to signal information to another. An extensive bibliography covers all items mentioned in the main text, in the postscripts, and in the introduction. The bibliography also includes a compilation of published papers and books that refer to the original reports.