Noncooperative Game Theory Assuming Bounded Rationality
{'Code': '04050100', 'Directorate': {'LongName': 'Direct For Social, Behav & Economic Scie'}, 'Division': {'LongName': 'Divn Of Social and Economic Sciences'}}
{'SignBlockName': 'Daniel H. Newlon'}
Game theory has become an indispensable tool for research activities in many branches of economics in recent years. In applied micro fields especially, where the behavior of the individual is often the focus of study, models of noncooperative games have become the primary models, most particularly when imperfect competition is an important element of the situation under study. The fact is, however, that the standard models of noncooperative game theory do not describe real-world behavior very well. The goal of this project is to build game models which more accurately describe and predict the behavior of real-world participants in economic activities. The models developed by this project include: (1) Evolutionary Modelling; (2) Models of Bounded Rationality for Game Situations: and (3) New Models that incorporate observed behavior such as a stick-with-winners philosophy associated with much trial-and-error or avoidance of situations in which unsuccessful outcomes have come about in the past. In the standard approaches to game-theoretic modelling, players are assumed to be completely rational and assumed to assume that their fellow players are completely rational. For applied purposes, these assumptions seem dubious, especially given the experimental evidence compiled over the years on both one- player and many-player games. This research project aims at constructing and developing game-theoretic models in which players are not assumed to behave in such completely-rational ways, with the goal being more realistic descriptive and normative tools for use in applications, especially economic applications. There is already a literature on the subject of modelling games with players of incomplete rationality, but the subject seems to be resistant to breakthroughs so far. The research pursues several approaches that could lead to breakthroughs. One is to continue the line of research in which strategy selection comes about as the result of evolutionary forces acting so as to favor those strategies which do relatively well in large populations. Another direction is to continue work on models in which players are assumed to act in particular nonoptimal ways. In both of these classes of models, behavior can be generated which, in certain examples, is both intuitively plausible and qualitatively different from the standard game- theoretic solutions prescribed.
{'FirstName': 'Robert', 'LastName': 'Rosenthal', 'EmailAddress': 'rosentha@bu.edu', 'StartDate': '07/01/1988', 'EndDate': None, 'RoleCode': 'Principal Investigator'}
{'Name': 'Trustees of Boston University', 'CityName': 'BOSTON', 'ZipCode': '022151300', 'PhoneNumber': '6173534365', 'StreetAddress': '881 COMMONWEALTH AVE', 'CountryName': 'United States', 'StateName': 'Massachusetts', 'StateCode': 'MA'}
{'url': 'https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/download?DownloadFileName=1988&All=true', 'xml': '8808362.xml'}