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Marco LiCalzi, Università Ca’ Foscari
di Venezia
Course description
The purpose of this course is to enable students to set up
and solve typical strategic problems arising in business and
economics. The necessary skills are developed by working out
common applications and examples of typical setups. The examples
range from the Bible to Wall Street, and are often inspired
by the news.The target audience includes any undergraduate
student with a serious interest about strategy: this covers
a lot of interests - those who want to take on the casinos,
those who want to be lawyers, those who want to pursue graduate
studies in economics, and those who aim for an M.B.A. and
a business career.
Prerequisites
You are expected to have completed one year of college mathematics,
or otherwise being able to differentiate the common functions,
compute the expected value of a random variable, and solve
small systems of linear equations.
Teaching method
The course is twelve weeks long, with two meetings per week.
Each week we cover a different item in the list below, mixing
theory and case studies as we go. The reading load is about
30 pages per week. (If necessary, additional material can
be made available as a PDF document on the class website.
Examination policy
Your final grade will be based on three items: homework (20%),
an intermediate written exam (35%) and a final written exam
(45%).
There will be two homework sets. Each homework
counts towards 10% of the final grade.
It is allowed (and warmly recommended: there is a lot to learn
from your fellows) that students discuss their homework with
each other. However, no more than two people may coauthor
the same homework.
Written exams are in class and, of course,
will be strictly individual. During a written exam, you are
not allowed to bring with you any written material, with the
exception of one for-side A4 paper that you can use at your
best. You can also bring with you a pocket calculator.
Schedule
| Day |
Time |
Topic |
Pages |
| 17/02 |
10.50 |
Introduction |
1-14 |
| 19/02 |
|
Introduction II |
15-40 |
| 24/02 |
|
Sequential moves I |
43-56 |
| 26/02 |
|
Sequential moves II |
56-78 |
| 02/03 |
|
Simultaneous moves I |
79-93 |
| 04/03 |
|
Simultaneous moves II |
93-99, 104-123 |
| 09/03 |
|
Mixed strategies I |
124-136 |
| 11/03 |
|
Mixed strategies II
Homework I out (due back 18/03) |
136-151, 159-162 |
| 16/03 |
|
Mixed moves I |
178-189 |
| 18/03 |
|
Mixed moves II |
189-208 |
| 23/03 |
|
Prisoner’s dilemna I |
255-269 |
| 25/03 |
|
Prisoner’s dilemna II |
269-284 |
| 30/03 |
|
Intermediate exam |
Up to p. 208 |
| 01/04 |
|
Strategic moves I |
288-306 |
| 06/04 |
|
Strategic moves II |
306-319 |
| 08/04 |
|
Evolutionary games I |
320-334 |
| 13/04 |
|
Evolutionary games II |
334-345, 352-355 |
| 15/04 |
|
Collective action I |
356-369 |
| 20/04 |
|
Collective action II |
369-388, 392-396 |
| 22/04 |
|
Uncertainty and information I |
397-412 |
| 27/04 |
|
Uncertainty and information II |
412-432 |
| 29/04 |
|
Voting I
Homework II out (due back 06/05) |
462-474 |
| 04/05 |
|
Voting II |
474-493 |
| 06/05 |
|
Auctions |
494-509 |
| 13/05 |
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Final exam |
From p. 255 onward |
Reading material
A. Dixit and S. Skeath (1999), Games of Strategy,
Norton.
For alternate reading
R. Gardner (2003), Games for Business and Economics,
second edition, Wiley.
Biography
Laurea in Economia Politica (Bocconi), M.S. in Operations
Research and Ph.D. in Decision Sciences (Stanford). Professor
at Ca’ Foscari and Bocconi. Director of the Ph.D. Program
in Economics and Organization of the School of Advanced Studies
in Venice. Editor of “Decisions in Economics and Finance”.
Fields of interest: Decision Theory, Mathematical Economics.
Current research interests: Target-based decision making.
Author of Teoria dei giochi, Milano: EtasLibri, 1995,
his most recent publications include: (with S. Spaeter), "Distributions
for the first-order approach to principal-agent problems",
Economic Theory, 21, 2003, 167-173; (with S.DellaVigna)
"Learning to make risk neutral choices in a normal world",
Mathematical Social Sciences 41, 2001, 19-37; "Upper
and lower bounds for expected utility", Economic
Theory 16, 2000, 489-502; (with R.Bordley) "Decision
analysis using targets instead of utility functions",
Decisions in Economics and Finance 23, 2000, 53-74;
"A language for the construction of preferences under
uncertainty", Revista de la Real Academia de Ciencias
Exactas, Fìsicas y Naturales 93, 1999, 439-450
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spring 2004