An interesting political problem that has been heavily discussed lately is the brain drain problem.  It is possible, however, to look at this from a game theory perspective.  Suppose that there are two types of workers in a developing country:  high and low productivity workers.  Now, suppose that both travel to a developed country to […]

        These days, the major news in technology/media industry has been possible acquisition of Yahoo! by Microsoft Co.  It seemed like these two business moguls were very close to merging together as Microsoft pursued actively after Yahoo!  However, the Board of Directors of Yahoo did not accept Microsoft’s bid and the acquisition did not […]

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/berman/P4S3.htm
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/game-evolutionary/
Evolutionary game theory brings a mathematical strategic aspect to the concept of evolution and survival of the fittest. The websites above question the rigidity of game theory when applied to the biological or cultural side of evolution. Using the prisoner’s dilemma as a model for behavior implies that there is an intrinsic […]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-doping-dilemma
The Scientific American article “The Doping Dilemma” written by Michael Shermer tells how game theory helps to explain the pervasive abuse of drugs in cycling, as well as baseball and other sports. As we have studied, game theory is the study of how players choose strategies in order to maximize their payoffs by anticipating […]

Everyone knows that parents are always tougher on the eldest child. Is it because they just get tired of disciplining their kids after the first one? Or is it actually adaptive?
According to this article about a paper published in the April 2008 of the Economic Journal, parents are using an adaptive strategy based […]

The information cascades that we have discussed in class have been limited to those that are determined by the number of people who have developed an opinion. Each person looks at those that have expressed an opinion before them but can see only their expressed choice, not their private information. This makes for […]

Social convention dictates that the more attractive you are, the higher your chances for finding a good ‘catch’, a beautiful wife, a handsome husband. In theory, there aren’t any problems with this idea. It’s almost common-sense in a way, if you think about it, but Slate writer Mark Gimein begs to differ, and […]

The article distributed by Knowledge at Penn’s Wharton School, which investigates the popularity of these social networks, comparing them to a fad or fashion that will never last. The article discusses how users of these sites are always looking for the next best one, bouncing from site to site. […]

“Network effect” is a term that is used to describe the characteristic of a certain good whose value to the buyer depends on how many other people use the product.
This term is often applied to the use of fax machines, the benefit of using one operating system over another, and the use of social networking […]

By now, we are familiar with the marketing implications of the Long Tail concept, which have been used to the advantage of sites like Netflix and Amazon. Sites like these try to market more obscure products to a large number of customers, realizing profits in doing so. This same concept has impacted the business models […]