On Friday of last week, the Public Policy School and the Econ Dept here at UMD hosted a symposium in honor of Thomas Schelling. It's been just about a year since Schelling won the Nobel prize. I have never been in the room with so many game theorists and esteemed economists at the same time. I was lucky enough to hear talks from Richard Thaler, Peyton Young, Josh Epstein, Robert Frank, Roger Myerson and Ken Binmore among several others.
For those of you reading from London, I highly recommend attending any talks that Ken Binmore of UCL might be giving over the next year (even if you aren't into game theory). I have been to hear him speak twice now and he has some truly original ideas in terms of game theory applications. The paper for his talk on conventions can be found here. It combines game theory, econ experiments and the philosophy of Hume and Rawls.
Myerson's talk was also very good. He developed the ideas in his talk using a simple rival claimants game. He asked the question "Why might rational citizens prefer leaders who are committed to costly military actions?" This framing is very interesting because it supposes that militarism and islamic radicalism and it supporters are perhaps a rational policy response to perceived threats.
There are two reasons: to profitably attack others (not feasible) or to decrease the chances of being attacked. Myerson argued that Schelling's Strategy of Conflict showed how important it is to communicate your strategy of conflict to adversaries (like the communications line between Russia and the US during the Cold War). This line of argument suggests that US foreign policy that admits no limitations to our use of military force "would seem to be a dangerous repudiation of strategic limits, which is likely to inspire counterforces." If you like this kind of thing, the slides are worth reading through. If you make it the end, you'll find he Myerson is one game theorist that doesn't take his abstract game theoretic trade too seriously.
Finally, it was fun to hear some of the best agent-based modelers in the business discuss what they do and how they do it (Epstein and Young). Someday, hopefully not too far off, I hope to have the programming savvy to tackle an agent-based model of my own making. For now, I am only good at the most basic of numerical analysis.
The closing event were a few words from Schelling himself. He is really going strong for someone in his mid-80s. He said it was the best symposium he had ever attended. I guess I was lucky to be there, but I have no reference point to judge from. I guess I'll take Tom's word for it.
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