14.12
Economic Applications of Game Theory
Analysis of strategic behavior in multi-person economic settings. Introduction to solution concepts, such as rationalizability, backwards induction, Nash equilibrium, subgame-perfect equilibrium, and sequential equilibrium. Strong emphasis on dynamic games, such as repeated games. Introduction to Bayesian games, focusing on Bayesian Nash Equilibrium, Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium, and signaling games. Applications drawn from microeconomics: imperfect competition, implicit cartels, bargaining, and auctions.
Fall 2025 · Economic Applications of Game Theory
Topics
- Introduction to Individual Decision-Making
- Representation of Games
- Dominance
- Rationalizability
- Nash Equilibrium
- Imperfect Competition
- Zero-Sum Games
- Backward Induction
- Negotiation
- Subgame-Perfect Nash Equilibrium
- One-Shot Deviation Principle and Bargaining
- Finitely Repeated Games
- Infinitely Repeated Games
- Folk Theorem
- Implicit Cartels
- Bayesian Games
- Bayesian Nash Equilibrium: Applications
- Auctions
- Revenue Equivalence
- Ad Auctions
- Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium
- Signaling
- Bargaining with Incomplete Information
- Cheap Talk
- Common Knowledge
Prerequisites & course information
Prereq: 14.01 and (6.041B, 14.04 , 14.30 , 18.05 , or permission of instructor) U (Fall) 4-0-8 units. HASS-S
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026–2027
- MIT OpenCourseWare ↗Fall 2025
- MIT OCW syllabus ↗
- MIT OCW calendar ↗
- Historical MIT OpenCourseWare offering. Named reading entries and schedule topics are automatically extracted from the linked source pages.