Loading ...Book Review: Game Theory at Work
Many undergraduate business students discover Game Theory in microeconomics. Typically, a professor will let students to play the Prisoner’s Dilemma or a simple Threat and Promise game. Afterwards, the professor whips out the Nash Equilibrium to explain how firms do their best given what its competitors are doing. Then it is off to Monopolistic Competition.
If they’re lucky when they take an upper-level micro course, they might discuss Adverse Selection or Price Discrimination. But rarely do business schools offer a course on Game Theory. If they do, it’s an elective or an MBA-600 course. This is unfortunate because applied Game Theory can provide future managers with real tools for responding to changes in the competitive landscape, something Strategic Management courses, with their emphasis on financial decision-making, cannot.
Game Theory is a branch of applied mathematics that tries to quantify decision making. But in Game Theory and Work: How to Use Game Theory to Outthink and Outmaneuver Your Competition (McGraw Hill, 2003), James Miller steers clear of mathematics and presents case studies and examples that illustrate how business owners, managers, and employees can make better decisions.
If you’re an economics student looking for an in-depth discourse on Game Theory, this book isn’t for you. It’s written to be a primer. Miller answers why neighborhoods can’t be ethnically diverse (mass coordination often leads to homogenous outcomes); why landlords require security deposits (the one who doesn’t gets all the deadbeats); why most revolutions produce narcissistic, brutal governments (to gain power, one must be willing to kill); and other real-world examples.
Miller also discusses negotiation tactics, managing employees, and the stock market.
Game Theory at Work is a very easy read, substantive, and provides a list of other books and references for anyone who wants to build his knowledge of the topic.
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