Decisions, Games, and Strategies
MBA 243/ ENGIN 298A/ INFO 290
3 Units
Thomas A. Marschak

This course is typically offered in the SPRING.
This is a related course of the MOT program.

Decisions, Games and Strategies has two related themes:

(1) The first half of the course considers Decision Analysis, which helps a manager to make a decision (launching a new product, choosing a new technology, locating a new facility) when he/she will not know how good the decision is until after it's made. The technique helps the decision maker to be consistent with his/her own beliefs about events that have not yet occurred and with his/her own attitudes toward risk. If you were retained by the decision maker as a consultant, a Decision Analysis might be appropriate. In performing the Analysis, how would you go about probing your client and how would you defend your procedure and your final advice? The first half of the course aims to answer these questions by developing some basic principles that the client seems likely to accept. We will see that if the client does so, then the client is led to accept the advice provided by the Analysis. To illustrate the ideas, we will use classroom exercises as well as several cases. Some of them are Decision Analyses that were actually performed and others are fictitious. Special attention will be paid to the option of learning more before making a final choice. A talk by a decision-analysis practitioner is planned.

(2) The second half of the course pursues the same theme but now the success of the decision depends on the behavior of one or more opponents. This time, simple game models will be appropriate. The questions to be addressed include: How should I bid in an auction? What strategy should I use in a bargaining situation? Is it useful to acquire a reputation for toughness in repeated confrontations with the same competitors?
Cases, and classroom (and Computer Lab) exercises, will illustrate the ideas.

In both parts of the course, homework sets using "toy" problems, will help to clarify concepts and techniques. In the term paper you will take a real-world problem that interests you, and will thoughtfully describe (without necessarily carrying it out) a Decision Analysis of the problem if it's not one that involves opponents, or a simple game analysis if it is.

Course Syllabus (pdf)