An Introduction to Game Theory & Strategic Thinking: A Free Course from Yale University

Taught by Ben Polak, an eco­nom­ics pro­fes­sor and now Provost at Yale Uni­ver­si­ty, this free course offers an intro­duc­tion to game the­o­ry and strate­gic think­ing. Draw­ing on exam­ples from eco­nom­ics, pol­i­tics, the movies and beyond, the lec­tures cov­er top­ics essen­tial to under­stand­ing Game theory–including “dom­i­nance, back­ward induc­tion, the Nash equi­lib­ri­um, evo­lu­tion­ary sta­bil­i­ty, com­mit­ment, cred­i­bil­i­ty, asym­met­ric infor­ma­tion, adverse selec­tion, and sig­nal­ing.”

Since Game The­o­ry offers “a way of think­ing about strate­gic sit­u­a­tions,” the course will “teach you some strate­gic con­sid­er­a­tions to take into account [when] mak­ing your choic­es,” and “to pre­dict how oth­er peo­ple or orga­ni­za­tions [will] behave when they are in strate­gic set­tings.”

The 24 lec­tures can be streamed above. (They’re also on YouTube and iTunes in audio and video). A com­plete syl­labus can be found be on this Yale web site. Texts used in the course are the fol­low­ing:

• A. Dix­it and B. Nale­buff. Think­ing Strate­gi­cal­ly, Nor­ton 1991
• J. Wat­son. Strat­e­gy: An Intro­duc­tion to Game The­o­ry, Nor­ton 2002
• P.K. Dut­ta. Strate­gies and Games: The­o­ry And Prac­tice, MIT 1999

Game The­o­ry will be added to our list of Free Eco­nom­ics Cours­es, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 1,700 Free Online Cours­es from Top Uni­ver­si­ties.