Game Theory for Business Analytics

Overview

Traditional research in business analytics focused on the decision theoretic perspectives, in which a single decision-making authority optimises the system as a whole under exogenous uncertainty. The past decades saw the evolution of business studies to address management problems with strategic uncertainty, in which different individuals, divisions and/or firms strategically interact with each other. Strategic interactions in multi-agent problems create new challenges for managers. As a natural quantitative analytical tool for such multi-agent decision making problems, game theory has widely and successfully been applied to the field of business management. This course introduces game theory as analytical tools and provides insights into managerial situations in order to assist with decision making when multiple agents with conflicting objectives are involved. To be more specific, it provide students with both cooperative and non-cooperative game theory based quantitative frameworks to analyse strategic interactions in economic problems and its impact on managerial decision making and to understand strategic situations in which different individuals/divisions/firms may have potentially conflicting incentives.