Course Description
Game theory is a fundamental analytical tool that has been widely applied across various disciplines, including economics, political science, sociology, biology, and environmental management. The objective of this lecture is to provide an overview of the core concepts of both non-cooperative and cooperative game theory, with a particular emphasis on their applications in economics and political sciences including environmental management. It is important to note that this lecture will involve minimal use of mathematics.

Course Objectives
By the end of this course, students will:

• Comprehend the fundamental concepts and terminology of both non-cooperative and cooperative game theory.
• Explore basic applications of game theory in economics, political science, and environmental management.
• Develop the ability to interpret and solve simple game models through the application of numerous exercises.

Course Topics

(1) Topic: Introduction and Strategic Form Games
Overview: This section provides an overview of the course and explains the representation of games in strategic form, along with the concept of Nash equilibrium including several applications.

(2) Topic: Extensive Form Games
Overview: This section explains the representation of games in extensive form and discusses the associated equilibrium concepts including several applications.

(3) Topic: Games with Incomplete Information
Overview: This section defines games with incomplete information, elaborates on their representation, and explains the concept of equilibrium in such games with applications.

(4) Topic: Cooperative Games (Including Bargaining Games)
Overview: This section introduces the fundamentals of cooperative games and their solutions like the core and the Shapley value, including an explanation of bargaining games including several applications.

(5) Topic: Evolutionary Games
Overview: This section introduces the basics of evolutionary games.

(6) Topic: Application to Environmental Management
Overview: This section introduces how to apply game theory to environmental management.

Assessment

• Class Participation: 15%
• Homework Assignments: 25%
• Midterm Exam: 25%
• Final Exam: 35%

Course Policies
There are two major homework assignments, along with smaller exercises following each topic. Attendance is strongly encouraged to ensure a thorough understanding of key concepts.

Late submissions of assignments will incur penalties.

Collaboration on assignments is permitted; however, each student is required to submit their own individual work.

Schedule
Each week consists of two lectures, or one lecture and one exercise session.

• Week1: Introduction to Game Theory; Prisoner's Dilemma and Dominant Strategy Equilibria
• Week2: Environmental Problems and Nash Equilibrium; Exercise
• Week3: Game Trees and Backward Induction; Exercise
• Week4: Analysis of Strategic Voting Part I; Analysis of Strategic Voting Part II
• Week5: Game Analysis of Public Goods Provision; Exercise
• Week6: Explanation of Home Assignment Exercise; Midterm Exam.
• Week7: The Core of Cooperative Games (Analysis of Indivisible Goods); Exercise
• Week8: Analysis of Voting Games Using the Core; Exercise
• Week9: Power Analysis in Voting (Shapley Value); Cost Allocation (Shapley value)
• Week10: Bankruptcy Problem Analysis; Exercise
• Week11: Analysis of Bargaining Problems; Introduction to Evolutionary Game Theory
• Week12: Application to Environmental Management

Bibliography

Y.Funaki and T.Yamato, "The Core of an Economy with Common Pool Resource: A Partition Function Form Approach," International Journal Game Theory, Vol.28, pp.157-171, 1999.

Hans Peters, Game Theory: A Multi-Leveled Approach, Springer, 2008

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: October 30, 2026