Teaching Game Theory and Social Theory
A particular privilege of my Political Science appointment is the opportunity to teach in the undergraduate core at Chicago. This year, I am again teaching the second quarter of our three-quarter sequence in Social Science Inquiry: Formal Theory. Eighteen students entered the classroom today, having spent the previous quarter studying social-choice theory. My course is an introduction to complete-information game theory alongside a survey of important questions in social theory.
The core is where Chicago students get exposure to big ideas and great books. It took a new text for me to figure out how to make this work in a course that is also about learning solution concepts and doing exercises. Tore Ellingsen’s outstanding Institutional and Organizational Economics: A Behavioral Game Theory Introduction is proof that a clear thinker doesn’t need many words or much notation to make a point. In fewer than 200 pages, and with a minimum of game theory, Tore takes readers from the state of nature to the limited-liability corporation. When we need to learn more game theory, we use Martin Osborne’s An Introduction to Game Theory. Roughly every other class, we dive into a substantive text—everything from Why Nations Fail to Career and Family to “The Problem of Social Cost.” But it’s Tore’s book that holds it all together.
Anyway, if you’re teaching a course like this—or you think you might want to—check out Institutional and Organizational Economics. My syllabus is here. Happy to talk.