'Game Theory will help know cause of wars'

Mumbai, Jan 10: Even as bloody conflicts engulf various parts of the world, and various powers vie for supremacy, Nobel laureate Robert J Aumann's insights on Game Theory may be relevant in understanding the basic cause of wars.

Delivering a lecture here last evening, he said that a ''Game was an interactive situation,'' and referred to Nask study (1950), which held the ''behaviour of the players in a Game was in strategic equillibrium if it were mutually optimal'' ''Game theory provides insights that may be relevant to understanding the basic causes of war, he said, defining a person's behaviour to be ''rational, if it, to the best of his knowledge, promotes his goals.'' He went on to explain 'population equilibrium' in support of his theory.

Prof Aumann, the winner of Nobel Prize for his contribution to Economics in 2005, teaches at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

One of the leading figures in the mathemetical surge that has charecterised Neo-Walrasian economics and game theory in the past forty years, he entered into economics via cooperative Game theory. In Neo-Walrasian theory, Prof Aumann is perhaps best known for his theory on core equivalence in a 'continuum' economy.

UNI