Office hours: Tuesdays 4pm - 5pm

Office location: Nexus 10, Level 4, Room 4.08

Telephone: 8313 4930

Preferred method of contact: email. Please do not call unless absolutely necessary.

Lectures

Thursdays, 3-5pm, Lower Napier LG28

Workshops

Tuesdays, 2-3pm, Hughes 309

On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

1	Identify strategic situations and represent them as games
2	Solve simple games using various techniques
3	Analyse economic situations using game theoretic techniques
4	Recommend and prescribe which strategies to implement
5	Understand better the mathematics involved in game theory

Textbook:

Strategy: An Introduction to Game Theory, by Joel Watson, W. W.Norton & Company, 3rd edition

An Introduction to Game Theory, by Martin J. Osborne, Oxford University Press, USA (August 1, 2003)

Games of Strategy, Second Edition, by Avinash K. Dixit and Susan Skeath, W. W. Norton & Company; 2 edition (April 2004)

This course uses MyUni intensively and you are required to check the website regularly.

https://myuni.adelaide.edu.au/webapps/login/ 

Course material such as lectures notes, assignments, assignment answer guides and supplementary material for developing your mathematical skills are available under MyUni. Also, a discussion board will be available for questions you may want to ask your lecturer or fellow classmates.

There will be NO LECTURE RECORDINGS. Game theory is best learnt through practice and hence, your attendance to and participation in lectures and workshops is mandatory.

LECTURES:
The lectures will provide you with the necessary understanding of the material to be able to solve the exercises you will be given for assignments or exams. Examples will be used to illustrate the concepts presented in this course.

WORKSHOPS:
Exercises to be prepared for the workshop will be posted online a week before. You are required to prepare ALL the exercises. During the workshop, some students will be asked to come to the board and present their work. Your lecturer will provide assistance if needed and questions from other students are strongly encouraged. This system works on a voluntary basis. However, in the absence of any volunteer, your lecturer reserves the right to terminate the workshop early. These workshops are aimed to guide you with the preparation of your assignments, not spoon-feed you answers.

The University expects full-time students (i.e. those taking 12 units per semester) to devote a total of 48 hours per week to their studies.

This translates to 12 hours per week for a semester course.

Week	Title	Chapter
1	Introduction - Extensive Form - Strategies and The Normal Form	Chapters 1-3
2	Beliefs, Mixed Strategies, and Expected Payoffs - General Assumptions & Methodology	Chapters 4-5
3	Dominance and Best response - Rationalizability & Iterated Dominance	Chapters 6-7
4	Nash Equilibrium - Oligopoly, Tariffs, Crime & Voting	Chapters 9-10
5	Mixed-Strategy Nash Equilibrium – Strictly Competitive Games & Security Strategies	Chapters 11-12
6	Details of the Extensive Form - Backward Induction and Subgame Perfection	Chapters 14-15
7	Repeated Games, Reputation, Random Events and Incomplete Information	Chapters 22-24
8	Class Test Review (Tuesday) and Class Test (Thursday)
	Mid Semester Break
9	Bayesian Nash Equilibrium, Rationalizability, Lemons, Auctions & Information Aggregation	Chapters 26-27
10	Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium - Job Market Signaling & Reputation	Chapters 28-29
11	Bargaining Problems - Analysis of Simple Bargaining Games	Chapters 18-19
12	Review for Final Exam

 

Mid semester exam  (Week 8) - 20%                                                                               

Date and time: Thursday 18 September – During lecture time, same location 

This exam will assess the topics of Weeks 1 to 7.

It will consist of mathematical problems and short answer questions. Past mid semester exam papers will be available on MyUni, for which no answers will be provided. You are however encouraged to talk about the past exams and their solutions on the discussion board or in my office hours.

Workshop Participation - 10%

Weekly

You will be asked to prepare some exercises before going to your workshop. Please be aware that this preparation is important as it will improve your learning during the workshop and will
contribute towards a dynamic environment where students and lecturer will interact more actively with one another. Workshop participation will be graded as described in the following “Assessment Details” section.

Assignments - 10%

Weekly 

Assignments are to be submitted on time. Some assignments may be group assignments.

Quizzes - 10%

Weekly

Quizzes will be administered during lecture time.

Final Exam - 50%

There will be a 3 hour exam. The final exam is comprehensive, i.e. it can cover ALL the topics

To gain a pass, a mark of at least 45% must be obtained on the final examination as well as
a total of at least 50% overall.

Important Notes on Assessments:

1 - Failure to sit the midterm examination will result in receiving zero points, whether a medical certificate is provided or not. The grade of the final examination will then account for 70% of the overall grade.

2 - The ‘workshop participation’ component of the assessment will be partly based on your attempt to answer an exercise on the board during the workshop. You will be allocated one of three possible grades, 1, 3 or 5, based on the quality of your answer. You may volunteer multiple times, and have the opportunity to improve your grade for this component throughout the semester. However if you already have a grade for this, you will only be permitted to volunteer for a question if there are no other volunteers who haven’t yet received a mark for participation. The other 5% of this component will reflect your active participation. Obviously, it will be correlated with your attendance as it is not possible to actively participate if you are not present.

3 - You will be eligible for the participation grade if and only if the lecturer has recorded that you have volunteered to provide a SATISFACTORY answer to the class for at least one of the weekly assignment questions during the course. Please see your lecturer if you have any concerns.

4 - Your quiz average will be based on your best 6 quizzes (out of 9) for  the semester. No replacement quizzes will be provided.

5 - If you are unable to attend workshops, lectures or hand in your assignments for some medical reasons, you have to provide a medical certificate. If the medical certificate covers a period longer than a week, you will need to organise some other arrangements with the lecturer. The same applies if you provide more than two medical certificates during the semester.

6 – If you are unable to attend workshops, lectures or hand in your assignments for any other reasons, you MUST contact your lecturer so that suitable alternative arrangements can be found.

7 - Legible hand-writing and the quality of English expression are considered to be integral parts of the assessment process. Marks may be deducted in the final examination because of poor hand-writing.

8 – If no students have prepared the workshop exercises and no students volunteer for answering an exercise, the lecturer reserves the right to shorten the workshop.

9 - Assessment marks prior to the final exam may be displayed on the course website. Students are encouraged to check their marks and notify the lecturer of any discrepancies.

1 - No late assignments accepted. Exceptional circumstances will be evaluated by your lecturer on a case-by-case basis and should be discussed whenever possible at least 48 hours before the due date. Failure to hand in an assignment on time will lead to a zero mark.

2 – Assignments must be handed in at the Professions Student Support Hub, located at Nexus 10 (corner Pultney Street and North Terrace). No assignment will be collected by your lecturer.

3 – Each assignment should be accompanied by a cover sheet, available at the hub.

4 – Assignments will be handed back during workshop times. If you were not present during that time, please email your lecturer to arrange the collection of your assignment. The last assignment will be available for collection at the hub only.

5 – Assignments due dates:

ASSIGNMENTS	DATE	TIME
Assignment 1	7 August	@ 2pm
Assignment 2	14 August	@ 2pm
Assignment 3	21 August	@ 2pm
Assignment 4	28 August	@ 2pm
Assignment 5	4 September	@ 2pm
Assignment 6	11 September	@ 2pm
Assignment 7	9 October	@ 2pm
Assignment 8	16 October	@ 2pm
Assignment 9	23 October	@ 2pm
Assignment 10	30 October	@ 2pm