Two cars race toward each other on a narrow desert road. Dust billows. Engines roar. The first driver to swerve loses everything: reputation, respect, the girl watching from the sidelines. The driver who holds steady wins it all. Simple enough, […]
Why ‘Going All In’ is the Worst Possible Move in High Stakes Chicken Game Read More »
Picture two lemonade stands on opposite corners of the same street. Each vendor watches the other, adjusting prices and production based on what they see across the asphalt. This scene captures something profound about how markets actually work that’s Cournot
Level Up Your Strategy: From Basic Economics to Cournot Competition Read More »
Picture a used car lot at sunset. Two identical sedans sit side by side, same year, same mileage, same price. One has been meticulously maintained by an elderly teacher who changed the oil every 3,000 miles. The other spent its
Picture two friends standing on opposite sides of town, phones dead, trying to meet up. One thinks they agreed on the coffee shop. The other is certain they said the bookstore. Both want nothing more than to see each other,
The Most Misunderstood Game in Economics (and Dating): Battle of the Sexes (Game Theory) Read More »
Words are free. Anyone can say anything. A used car salesman swears the engine is perfect. A poker player claims they have a royal flush. A company promises to cooperate rather than undercut prices. These statements cost nothing to make
The Ultimate Bluff: Why Game Theorists Take ‘Just Talking’ Seriously (Cheap talk) Read More »
Picture a chess grandmaster staring at the board, twenty moves deep into a game. Every piece movement branches into countless futures—some leading to victory, others to humiliating defeat. The master isn’t trying to find the single best move in isolation.
Why Minimax Is the ‘First Principle’ of Rational Decision Making Read More »
Picture a chess grandmaster staring at the board, eyes glazed over in concentration. What separates them from an amateur isn’t just their knowledge of openings or their tactical sharpness—it’s their ability to see the game in reverse. Like a detective
Is Backward Induction the Most Powerful Tool in Game Theory? Read More »
Enter the tragedy of the commons. Picture a village green where everyone’s sheep graze freely. One farmer adds another sheep. Then another does the same. Soon, the grass disappears, the soil erodes, and everyone’s flock starves. When the dust settles
Stop Blaming Greed: The Math Behind the Tragedy of the Commons Read More »
John Maynard Keynes never actually organized a beauty contest, which is perhaps the first irony worth savoring. The man who would reshape modern economics drew his famous metaphor from a newspaper parlor game popular in 1930s Britain, where readers submitted
Traditional game theory rests on a beautiful but problematic assumption: everyone is perfectly rational, and everyone knows that everyone else is perfectly rational, and everyone knows that everyone knows this, stretching into infinity. It’s an elegant foundation for mathematical proofs,
When ‘Rational’ Isn’t Enough: Why We Need Cognitive Hierarchy Theory for Real Life Read More »