NASH EQUILIBRIUM AND THE HISTORY OF strongECONOMICstrong THEORY - Personal.pdf

NASH EQUILIBRIUM AND THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THEORY by Roger B. Myerson first version, April 1996 revised, March 1999 Abstract. John Nashs formulation of noncooperative game theory was one of the great breakthroughs in the history of social science. Nashs work in this area is reviewed in its historical context, to better understand how the fundamental ideas of noncooperative game theory were developed and how they changed the course of economic theory. JEL Classification numbers: B20, C72 Authors address: Department of Economics, University of Chicago, 1126 E 59th Street, Chicago, IL 606037. E-mail: myerson@ URL: /~rmyerson/ This paper is published in the Journal of Economic Literature 36:1067-1082 (1999), which is the only definitive repository of the content that has been certified and accepted after peer review. NASH EQUILIBRIUM AND THE HISTORY OF ECONOMIC THEORY by Roger B. Myerson, Northwestern University 1. Looking back on an intellectual revolution November 16, 1999 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the day that John Nashs first paper on noncooperative equilibrium was received by the editorial offices of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The fiftieth anniversary of a major event can be a good time to look back at it, when we are still linked to it by living memories, but we have enough distance to see some of its broader historical significance. From this perspective, Nashs theory of noncooperative games should now be recognized as one of the outstanding intellectual advances of the twentieth century. The formulation of Nash equilibrium has had a fundamental and pervasive impact in economics and the social sciences which is comparable to that of the discovery of the DNA double helix in the biological sciences. Yet even now, th