Interview with John Nash about economics, mental illness, and the film based on his life (by Michael Brooks )

Baseball pitchers deliberately target hitters more often in the American League, where the pitchers do not have to take a turn at bat (by Daniel H. Pink)

What states should presidential candidates visit in the final days of their campaign? Some strategies are dominant, others are mixed. (by Jordan Ellenberg)

Argues that outsourcing and globalization are not zero sum games as the presidential campaign may make some believe.

Daphne Koller, winner of the MacArthur "genius award," develops methods for calculating mixed strategies.

Allocation of resources across states by presidential candidates is a zero sum game.

What happens when people play public contribution games during a brain scan? We discover that people like punishing defectors even at a cost to themselves.

A modern updating of Axelrod's tournament finds a strategy that beats tit for tat in the prisoner's dilemma, but only by sacrificing team mates.

An introduction to the p-beauty contest and its repeated play, with some vague application to financial markets (by John Allen Paulos)

A model offers game theoretic predictions of the likelihood of terrorist attacks.

Colonies of generally competitive ants have been found with a genetic mutation that turns off competitiveness and allows for large-scale cooperation (by Ingrid Sanders)

Decribes progress in the science of decision-making, including economic, psychological, and neurological perspectives. (by Laura Spinney)

Local governments overspend due to moral hazard and inappropriate incentives rewarding growth without punishing expenditure.

Environmental protection suffers from the tragedy of the commons where public lands suffer due to a lack of property rights.

Argues that outsourcing of American jobs is a tragedy of the commons in which each company raises its profits but leads to less purchasing power at home.

Moral hazard allows AL batters to get hit by pitches more often than NL batters since the designated hitter rule precludes a tit-for-tat response.

Notes that international cooperation to fight terrorism is a prisoner's dilemma with each nation having incentive to do less than its share.

Cites arguments that adverse selection will lead to only the healthiest accepting medical savings accounts, leaving remaining workers with higher health costs.

New York City development suffers from a tragedy of the commons in which no one has incentive to invest in the quirky, but the City benefits from the weird.

Student paper notes that college dating is a prisoner's dilemma with payoffs expressed in "exclusivity points" (yup, it's a stretch).

Relates game theory to statistical mechanics and discusses possible crossover between the two fields.

Cites an executive who notes that to sift through future scenarios for the telecom industry, "you need game theory to work them all out."

Discusses the international importance of India-Pakistan cricket matches and notes that sport and war are often zero-sum games.

Coins are more likely to end up facing the same way they started the coin toss, calling into question their use as a method of resolving disputes.

Employer surveys reveal that many employees are not proficient, partly due to training and partly due to moral hazard and poor incentive structures.

David Romer's analysis suggesting that football teams punt too often is considered by the New England Patriots. (by David Loenhardt)

Chronicles one man's attempt to bring sanity and careful calculations into football strategy. (by Jascha Hoffman)

Amusing article about how misspelled auction listings are less likely to be found and thus create an arbitrage opportunity. (by Diana Jean Schemo)

Athletes appear subconsciously to apply Bayes' Rule and to play equilibrium mixed strategies

A leading auctioneer discusses the winner's curse, reflecting industry experience but only a vague, rudimentary view of auction theory (by Deb Weidenhamer)