Classical Games

Prisoner’s Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, oligopoly, bargaining, coordination — the canonical games.
TUTORIALS

Classical Games

Prisoner's Dilemma, Hawk-Dove, oligopoly, bargaining, coordination — the canonical games.

Bank runs as a coordination game — the Diamond-Dybvig model

classical-games
coordination
bank-runs
financial-economics

Model bank runs as a coordination game using the Diamond-Dybvig framework in R, showing the Stag Hunt structure, deposit insurance as equilibrium selection, and contagion dynamics with N depositors.

May 8, 2026

Battle of the Sexes — coordination with conflicting preferences

classical-games
battle-of-the-sexes
coordination
multiple-equilibria

Analyse the Battle of the Sexes game formally in R, find all Nash equilibria (two pure + one mixed), and visualize the coordination problem with best-response correspondences.

May 8, 2026

The game of Chicken and the art of brinkmanship

classical-games
chicken
brinkmanship
mixed-strategy

Analyse the Chicken game in R, compute all Nash equilibria including the mixed-strategy equilibrium, model brinkmanship as a commitment device, and apply to nuclear deterrence, traffic merging, and corporate competition.

May 8, 2026

Chicken / Hawk-Dove — brinkmanship and anti-coordination

classical-games
chicken
hawk-dove
anti-coordination
ess

Analyse the Chicken (Hawk-Dove) game in R, computing pure and mixed Nash equilibria, exploring the evolutionary stable strategy, and connecting to models of escalation and conflict.

May 8, 2026

The Colonel Blotto game — resource allocation across battlefields

classical-games
blotto
resource-allocation
mixed-strategies

Analyse the Colonel Blotto game in R, exploring optimal resource allocation across multiple battlefields, mixed-strategy equilibria, and applications to political campaigns and military strategy.

May 8, 2026

The El Farol Bar Problem

classical-games
bounded-rationality
agent-based-model
minority-game

Simulating Arthur’s (1994) El Farol Bar problem with heterogeneous prediction strategies, analysing attendance oscillations, and connecting to minority games and market ecology.

May 8, 2026

The iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma — Axelrod’s tournaments

classical-games
prisoners-dilemma
iterated-games
axelrod
cooperation

Replicate Robert Axelrod’s classic 1980 computer tournaments for the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma in R, with round-robin scoring, strategy comparison, and evolutionary dynamics.

May 8, 2026

Matching Pennies — Theory Meets Experimental Evidence

classical-games
matching-pennies
experimental-economics

Implement the classic zero-sum matching pennies game with its unique mixed Nash equilibrium, then simulate experimental play using bounded rationality models including epsilon-greedy, fictitious play, and reinforcement learning to study convergence and exploitable patterns in R.

May 8, 2026

Matching Pennies — the simplest zero-sum game

classical-games
matching-pennies
zero-sum
mixed-strategy

Analyse Matching Pennies as the canonical two-player zero-sum game with a unique mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium, implementing minimax strategies and expected payoff calculations in R.

May 8, 2026

The Prisoner’s Dilemma — formal setup and dominant strategy analysis

classical-games
prisoners-dilemma
dominant-strategy
social-dilemma

Define the one-shot Prisoner’s Dilemma formally, prove that mutual defection is the unique dominant-strategy equilibrium, and explore how payoff parameters affect the tension between individual and collective rationality.

May 8, 2026

The Stag Hunt — coordination, trust, and risk dominance

classical-games
stag-hunt
coordination
risk-dominance

Analyse the Stag Hunt as a coordination game with Pareto-ranked equilibria in R, comparing payoff dominance and risk dominance, with basin-of-attraction analysis.

May 8, 2026

The Sealed-Bid War of Attrition

classical-games
war-of-attrition
all-pay-auction
bayesian-nash-equilibrium

Analyse the sealed-bid war of attrition as an all-pay second-price auction, derive the symmetric Bayesian Nash equilibrium with exponential bidding strategies for uniform private values, and compare revenue and surplus with the standard all-pay auction.

May 8, 2026
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