ECON 221
UBC
Spring, 2023
Li, Hao
Course Outline
Professor: Li, Hao, 604-822-6685, Iona Building 112, hao.li@ubc.ca, https://lihao.microeconomics.ca/.
Course Canvas page: https://canvas.ubc.ca/courses/106570.
Classes: Tuesdays and Thursdays 2pm to 3:30pm, at Buchanan A201.
Announcements: Check the Announcement section on the Canvas page regularly for updates on all things about the course.
Teaching Assistants: Jack Madison (jackmadi@student.ubc.ca) and Juan Gil Perea (jgilper@student.ubc.ca). Every week Jack and Juan will each conduct two identical one-hour, in person tutorial sessions that you should have already signed up for. The two T.A.’s will also hold weekly office hours, Jack on Mondays from 3 to 4 in room 333 of Iona, and Juan on Fridays from 11 to 12 in room 343 of Iona.
Textbook: Games of Strategy (5th edition), by Dixit, Sheath, and McAdams.
Office hours: Wednesdays 10:30am to 12pm.
Goals: The main goal of this course is to introduce you to the most fundamental concepts of (non-cooperative) game theory. The focus will be on concepts, with analysis and applications used to help you understand the concepts at deeper levels. The broad objective is to enable students to recognize the strategic element of social interactions. The modeling tools and concepts of Game Theory can then be applied to gather insights on the behavior in these interactions and to understand how changes to the rules of interactions will likely affect social outcomes.
Math level: Calculus is not required for this course. However, familiarity with basic concepts such as function, equation, and probability may be helpful.
Evaluation: Your grade in the course will be based on your marks in 10 homework assignments, 1 midterm test and 1 final exam. The total weight of the assignments in the course grade is 10%, so each assignment is worth 1 point out of 100. I will post assignments on the Canvas page; most of the assignments are from the textbook. You will have two weeks to complete an assignment and submit it online on Canvas. After the assignments are submitted the answers will be posted. The T.A.’s will not correct the assignments, and will grade them according to how much effort was put in: 0 for no effort or very little effort, 0.5 for some but insufficient effort, and 1 for sufficient effort. The weight on your midterm is 40% and the weight on your final is 50%. If your score on the final (out of 100) is better than your score on the midterm (out of 100), the final score will count for 90%. The midterm is tentatively set to Thursday February 16 at 2pm in class. If for medical reasons or other emergencies you are unable to take the midterm, all 40% of the weight on the midterm will be automatically transferred to the final; there will not be a make-up test.
Structure: The course material organized around two main components: i) the theory component, which include the main modeling tools and theoretical concepts; ii) applications, which will illustrate the main concepts through examples drawn from a variety of fields/disciplines. The order of chapters in the textbook to be covered is as follows:
Lecture 1: Chapter 1 (Basic Ideas and Examples) 1, 2; Chapter 2 (How to Think about Games of Strategy) 2, 3; Chapter 3 (Games with Sequential Moves) 1, 2, 4, 3
Lecture 2: Chapter 4 (Simultaneous-move Games: Discrete Strategies) 1, 3, 4, 6, 5, 2, 7, 8
Lecture 3: Chapter 5 (Simultaneous-move Games: Continuous Strategies) 1, 2, 3
Lecture 4: Chapter 6 (Combining Sequential and Simultaneous Moves) 1, 2, 3
Lecture 5: Chapter 7 (Simultaneous-move Games: Mixed Strategies) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Lecture 6: Chapter 9 (Uncertainty and Information) 1, 2, 4, 5, 6
Lecture 7: Chapter 10 (The Prisoners’ Dilemma and Repeated Games) 1, 2
Lecture 8: Chapter 11 (Collective-action Games) 1, 2, 3, 5
Lecture 9: Chapter 14 (Design of Incentives) 2, 1, 5
Lecture 10: Chapter 15 (Auctions, Bidding Strategy, and Auction Design) 1, 3, 2