THIS ASSIGNMENT IS DUE IN CLASS SATURDAY, APRIL 15

The assignment has two parts.  

 

(1) In the first part I ask you to come up with an example of a political interaction and show how to model it as a two-player game.  Note that there are three elements in this task that have to be made clear.  First, there is some real life situation (interaction) that you have to describe.  Second, there is a game (i.e., a set of actions and the corresponding payoff matrix) that you have to construct.  And third, you have to make sure (present an argument, if necessary) that the correspondence between the game and the situation described is clear.  This correspondence involves two elements: actions and payoffs.  You have to make sure that it makes sense (at least under some circumstance) to assume that players in real life (1) have whatever actions you assume them to have in the game and (2) have payoffs as assumed in the payoff matrix. You need to justify only the order of payoffs, not their magnitude.

 

Make your description brief.  These projects will be graded for their originality and correctness (does the game indeed correspond to the interaction described?), not for their length.

 

 

(2) The second part of your assignment can be described as the first part done “in reverse:” take a payoff matrix first and then think up a real life situation that corresponds to it.   (Note: doing it “in reverse” is usually more difficult.) The key element of this part of the assignment is the specific payoff matrix you are supposed to work with.  Here is how you will identify your payoff matrix: take the last four digits (denote them as k,l,m,n with n being the last digit) of your student id  number (assume my id number is 6) and consider the following game:

 

 

 

 

         X

 

         Y

 

 

   A

 

                  k

 

k

 

                 m

 

l

 

 

   B

 

                   l

 

m

 

                  n

 

n

 

 

Now think about a real life situation where the structure of payoffs is like in the game above.  Describe this situation briefly.  As noted before, make sure that it does make sense to assume that both players have only two actions available and that the order of payoffs in reality is like in the order of payoffs in the game.

 

 

 

 

Finally, a few specifics:

 

FORMAT:       All text has to be typed. Payoff matrix can be drawn “by hand.”  Hand written projects will not be accepted.

 

LENGTH:        You should definitely fit each of the two parts on a single page (two pages for the whole assignment). 

 

Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com