A Course in Game Theory (Mit Press)

This book was assigned for a graduate economics class I'm taking. It's very good, very complete, introduces all of the important game theory concepts in a very sophisticated way and covers a lot of material, but it's very dense, it doesn't take a long time to explain things. It tell you how it is and moves on to the next topics. I like a lot of the examples, they're entertaining, but they don't do a lot of showing you how to solve games. For someone who is learning game theory for the first time, I liked a book that was used for teaching undergrads by Dixit and Skeath, I think it was called Games of Strategy. But for a more advanced coverage of the material, this book is very good.

This is one of the best books ever written on game theory. I originally used it for my first year PhD microeconomics course as a reference and found it immensely helpful. Nowadays I still refer to it now and then during research. The authors also give excellent explanations of the economics, not just the math. A must have on the shelf of an economic theorist.You can find electronic copies of the book and the solution manual on the authors' website: http://books.osborne.economics.utoronto.ca/. The authors also maintain a very comprehensive errata for all printings of the book: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/osborne/cgt/.

This book is a decent alternative to the Gibbons text (which I personally prefer). You could say this book is much more comprehensive and much more mathematical than Gibbons, though. My own opinion is that much of the game theory as described in this book is not general audience and sometimes very tedious if you are only interested in theory and not so much interested in real analysis.If you find Gibbons to be too easy or way below your level, this book is one option. The more ideal option, though, would just be to start reading academic papers - as you are obviously ready to do so. That way you could get the knowledge first hand and wouldn't need to spend time on a very detailed second hand review of areas that may not be exactly what you are looking for.

Ten years after this good came out, Osborne wrote  An Introduction to Game Theory , a more comprehensive and focused book that also takes a more leisurely pace and provides more concrete problems. Some have said that this book is better suited to graduate students, while "An Introduction" is more appropriate to undergrads. Speaking as someone who's taken game theory at both an undergraduate and graduate level, I don't see any advantage to this book in either context. It is concise, yes, but it is also dense and suffers from the authors' disagreements over several fundamental issues.If you are looking for an advanced textbook in game theory, then I'd strongly recommend Ken Binmore's recent effort,  Playing for Real . It's wide-ranging and rich in challenging problems.

The authors assume that you are quite familiar with game theory. Concepts and complex notations are just shortly introduced, discussions of varied topics often ended up quickly. Almost no motivation. Not suited for beginners. I would recommend the authors to write a more complete one, in which every step and each reasoning are clearly explained, and suited for a wider audience, while maintaining the same level of difficulty. After all, a book, to be a book, should be “readable”. But you may find the book a little boring if you to seat in the library reading it in details. Rather, it is written in a reference style.

i study political science. there are game theory texts aimed at poli sci specifically (e.g., McCarty and Meirowitz), but this is a far better book. make sure to find the answer key in PDF.

The game theory is separated by repeated game (case non-cooperative ) and cooperative game. The last model is reduced to general equilibrium studied by Walras and Arrow. It exists an other case which have aspects of all two theories, the Nash bargaining.

good

Really extensive book. It covers a complete advance course in Game Theory for PhD students.

Arrived safe and sound and at time.

I found the book well written and interesting. Although the formal mathematical prerequisites are low, it is a very precise and formal text, requiring logical reasoning. Some proofs are difficult, in that the gaps between succesive steps are large at times.Unfortunately, many interesting facts, and even proofs are given as excercises. There is a solution book available, but for reasons known to the authors only, it is not made available to the general reader like me. This makes the book less suitable for self study.On the bright side, the book has virtually no misprints; less than any other I have read in the past 3-4 years.

The reviews posted above are not accurate. Solutions to questions are freely available on the authors website. The only requirement is you must register (yet again for free), and then you can access the textbook and the solutions for free. Alternatively you can simply google the text title and solution manual and you will find the solutions.

Contains all necessary info, but it's very sparse. You should read the papers they draw from as well as the book in order to understand.