Via the AP/NYT: Game Theorists Win Nobel Prize for Economics
Robert J. Aumann and Thomas C. Schelling won the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work in game theory that explains political and economic conflicts, arms races and even preventing warfare.[...]
Aumann, 75, and Schelling, 84, have helped to ”explain economic conflicts such as price wars and trade wars, as well as why some communities are more successful than others in managing common-pool resources,” the academy said in its citation.
The funny thing is that this is the prize for economics. I would argue Schelling’s theories have done more to promote peace than has the IAEA, this year’s Peace Prize winner. Nonetheless, I do understand why he won this prize.
Tyler Cowen, who was a student of Schelling’s at Harvard, comments on his work here and provides some details about his career.
Kieran Healy comments here and Duncan Black here.
No word from the blog named for one of Schelling’s famous texts, however (indeed, Kingdaddy must be otherwise occupied at the moment).
October 10th, 2024 at 12:38 pm
Game theory is completely ahistorical and far-removed from reality. Name any work in poli. sci. that has used game theory as a successful theoretical model for purposes of explaining causality or prediction.
October 10th, 2024 at 4:40 pm
Oh snap, Dr. T, ole Kenneth just sent to you back to school.
October 11th, 2024 at 1:03 pm
Kenneth Waltz (heh, yeah, funny) writes: “Name any work in poli. sci. that has used game theory as a successful theoretical model for purposes of explaining causality or prediction.”
Guess it depends on what counts as “successful,” but I think Samuel Popkin made a decent (not knockdown, but respectable) case for explaining important elements of peasant politics in SE Asia using something like a game-theoretic framework. And he used no math, which you’ll no doubt like (a lot like some of Schelling’s work in this respect). Also, escalation/arms-race models seem to predict the rough terrain of cold war weapons procurement policy in the US and USSR, and maybe also in India and Pakistan, I’d think, but again, the critics of game theory (at least, those who bow before Ian Shapiro and company) tend to start with fuzzy goalposts, and then move them at their convenience (this even supposing that the sole purpose of game theory is either precise prediction or knockdown comprehensive causal explanation — I don’t think either really get at what game theory is good for, although it has modest role to play in causal explanation).
Just passing through.