Earlier this year I had a blog post on the government shutdown and modeled it as a modified game of chicken with ensuing predictions that suggested a short lived government shutdown, the Democrats caving in, and the Republicans having their way. If you missed it, that is an interesting post and you sure want to read it, as what follows below is closely related to that analysis. As of writing we are now at the one week mark of another government shutdown. President Trump has a

In the wake of the Florida shooting and the resurgent debate on gun control, to focus our attention on solutions it may be helpful to see the problem through the lens of game theory in order to understand how to proceed from a policy point of view. Game theory is an analytical tool that helps us to analyze and provide predictions in settings where behavior is decidedly strategic. The analysis involves identifying the players, their strategy sets, characterizing the nature

Twice this year the media has focused our attention on the impending showdown in Congress as lawmakers try to avoid a government shutdown and pass bills that fund the government to function for yet another short period. It sometimes helps to model these real world political actions to focus on what the underlying issue might be, and perhaps enable the making of predictions that one might expect to follow in such settings. Game theory allows us to do this. In a typical game