Undergraduate - UnitECC2610 - Game theory and strategic thinking

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Organisational Unit	Department of Economics
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2015 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Paola Labrecciosa

Synopsis

Game theory offers a tool for strategic thinking. It can be thought of as the art of beating your rivals, knowing that they are trying to do the same to you. Individuals, firms, governments and nations behave strategically, for good and bad. Over the last few decades, game theory has been developed for the purpose of understanding social phenomena. It has become the major tool used by social scientists to understand, predict and regulate strategic interaction among agents who have conflicting interests. This unit provides an introduction to game theory with an emphasis on real-world cases, including applications in economics and business.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

identify real situations where game theory can be enlightening
put a real situation into game theoretical formalism
manipulate the formalism via game theory to reveal insights
comprehend and critically assess complex strategies.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 40%
Examination: 60%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated readings, assessment and preparation for scheduled activities. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Paola Labrecciosa