Is game theory dangerous? | with David McAdams

From the prisoners’ dilemma to the Chicken Game: we all know the entertaining and powerful stories from game theory that help us to quickly identify the strategic core of a given situation.

Today’s guest David McAdams explains to us that - while these simplified stories are very useful – they might lead to wrong predictions and recommendations when used in the wrong context.

David also gives some practical examples from his work as a professor and consultant (e.g. on vaccine distribution in the current pandemic, and the fight against antibiotic resistance of so-called super-bugs), and we see that choosing the right underlying story and collecting the correct initial data are crucial prerequisites to the success of a game theoretic analysis.

 

David McAdams is Professor of Economics and Professor of Business Administration at the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and author of the book “Game-Changer: Game Theory and the Art of Transforming Strategic Situations”.

David mentions several interesting research topics in the outlook of the interview. Here are the links to the corresponding papers (some behind a paywall):

• Learning through the grapevine: The Impact of Message Mutation, Transmission Failure, and Deliberate Bias: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3391403.3399521
• Social Networks and the Market for News: https://sites.duke.edu/rachelkranton/files/2020/04/Social-Networks-and-the-Market-for-News-Kranton-McAdams-April-2020.pdf
• Viral Social Learning: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3299129

In addition, you can learn more about David’s current research activities on his homepage.