Ross • 22nd Oct 2009 • Living, Thinking • game theory, names, nomenclature, policy, teaching
Over on Cheap Talk, Jeff recounts being taught game theory by Matthew Rabin:
As if to remove all illusion that what we were studying was connected to reality, every game we analyzed in class was given a name according to his system of “stochastic lexicography.” Stochastic lexicography means randomly picking two words out of the dictionary and using them as the name of the game under study. So, for example, instead of studying “job market signaling” we studied something like “rusty succotash.”
I like this idea. To some extent, it reminds me of the operational names used in military and police circles, such as the Met‘s ‘Operation Bumblebee’ or ‘Operation Trident’. Working in the government policy process and knowing the degree to which a scheme for X may end up actually being a scheme for Y (but still called the X Scheme) I would welcome the neutrality of abstract nomenclature.
Ross • 11th Aug 2009 • Learning, Thinking • congestion, economics, game theory, public policy, roads, traffic
The Christian Science Monitor‘s Bright Green Blog picks up an interesting paper on closing roads, traffic and Braess’s Paradox.
..when individual drivers seek the quickest route, they sometimes end up slowing things down for everybody.
GPS must add to this problem, especially on models that don’t dynamically adjust for traffic. Even with models that do, the Nash equilibrium may be sub-optimal.
I have not come across Braess’s Paradox before. It worries me. Most government intervention is built on the idea of ‘market failure’. A BP situation looks like the ultimate market failure, and could thus be an open door for additional regulation. Some of this would be good, if paternalist (a la Nudge). I worry that some may be bad, in freedom terms (i.e. planners get to override GPS updates).
The saving grace is that regulation to enforce the optimal outcome may be more costly that the gap between the optimal outcome and the Nash equilibrium.
