Game Theory, World Events, and BdM
I took a few minutes away from studying today to attend a talk in the business school at Northwestern given by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita (BdM). I first read about him a few years ago in an article in GOOD Magazine. He’s an important guy, I guess. He has a wikipedia page, a TED talk, was on the Daily Show, and has published a few books and papers. By modern standards he fits those qualifications for importance. He’s also a professor at NYU and consults various “top-secret” high level government entities (I roll my eyes when people talk about that kind of stuff). I was able to find a few interesting papers [1][2] he had published previously but it looks like he only really works with mass-market writing and consulting these days.
Some of what I study here is game theory, in fact, the theme of my next quarter is game theory: two courses on game theory and one that will probably be about game theory on networks. I knew a little bit about his work beforehand and I know various game theoretic models so I was hoping he would talk more quantitatively. Unfortunately, any slide with numbers or equations on it, he quickly skipped in lieu of talking about his quantitative ability and giving his thoughts on international politics. Not that it was not interesting, he is a very captivating speaker and I find international politics interesting.
However, I left the talk asking myself if I learned anything really new or valuable from the talk. I don’t think I did. I left with the following take-aways:
- BdM and his team are good at making predictions about global international conflict. They are right 90% of the time. Some journalists and the government says so.
- He uses game theory to do this.
- Many of his models are super complicated and he gets hired by Uncle Sam and big corporations alike.
- He has talented undergrads working with some of his models.
I was hoping that he would share more insight into how those who do theory (like me) can apply models to the real world. How can we leverage cooperative game theory and economics to make claims about international politics? What kinds of models does he use? How does he use the work of guys like Myerson? Does he use any algorithmic game theory? If so, what algorithms are important? As students and those who study game theory, what kinds of research should we consider doing?
There were some very pre-eminant game theorists in the audience and I was disappointed they didn’t ask any questions at the end. Rather, he had a couple softball questions about his thoughts on current global situations. I regret not asking questions like those above. Lesson learned.