Dr Marco Giani

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Political Science and Political Economy. This course is available on the MSc in Public Administration and Government (LSE and Peking University) and MSc in Public Policy and Administration. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

MSc Political Science and Political Economy students will be granted priority access as this is a compulsory course on this programme. Other postgraduates wanting to take the course (space permitting) require the permission of the teachers responsible.

Introduction to game theory for graduate students of political science

1. The ingredients of games. Static games of complete information. Normal form and extensive form representation. Dominant strategies. Iterated deletion of strictly dominated strategies. Nash equilibrium.Mixed strategies.

2. Dynamic games of complete information. Backward induction and subgame perfection. Sequential bargaining. Finitely and infinitely repeated games. The Folk theorem.

3. Bayes rule and rationality. Bayesian Nash equilibrium. Perfect Bayesian equilibrium.

4. Applications to Political Science.

20 hours of lectures and 8 hours of seminars in the MT. 1 hour of seminars in the ST.

In addition students will sit a two hour mock exam in week 11 of MT.

Weekly problem sets to be completed and discussed in class.

The core text for the course is M J Osborne, An Introduction to Game Theory, Oxford University Press 2004

Exam (100%, duration: 2 hours) in the main exam period.