John Forbes Nash

It is through the contributions of economists, mathematicians such as John Forbes Nash that have improved or simplified the theories and principles of the economics. It has also made the application of these theories much easier in our lives.
John Forbes Nash Jr was born on the 13th of June 1928 in Bluefield West Virginia, US. His love of science developed at a young age through encyclopaedias and scientific books however his love for mathematics only began at a later stage in his life while he was in Carnegie Mellon University. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics and Master of Science in 1948. He then received a scholarship at Princeton University where he continued with his studies in mathematics. John Nash’s break-through

A cooperative game is a game where joint-action agreements are enforceable or cooperative behaviour occurs where as a non-cooperative game is when players act in their own interest and cooperative behaviour is not possible ( Dixit,Reiley,Skeath,2009) .Though John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern discovered a theory that changed the outlook of games, the two mathematicians could not develop a solution to the non-cooperative games. In 1950, John Nash expanded on the non-cooperative game by developing a solution called the Nash equilibrium. Nash equilibrium is” an optimal outcome where no player can has the incentive to deviate from his or her chosen strategy after considering an opponent’s choice”(Investopedia). It is making the best decision for oneself considering the strategies of other players. In order for Nash equilibrium to occur, the one player needs to “know” what the other player’s next move is and can only do so if the player bases his decision on a belief that the other player will behave in a certain manner. The beliefs should be correct for equilibrium to be achieved however this can be made simpler if the players have played the game before to establish the behaviour of the other player. To illustrate the concept of the Nash Equilibrium, the Prisoner’s dilemma will be

Though he was awarded with Nobel Prize for his contribution to Game theory, he was not acknowledged for his work on the Bargaining Problem concept. The Bargaining Problem is a situation where two players are willing to collaborate, trade or negotiate (Wikipedia). A case where one player’s “no action” does not have an impact on the other player. The concept of the bargaining problem is to understand how the two players interact when non-cooperation leads to Pareto inefficiency for example battle of the sexes where there is more than on equilibrium so now both players need to choose an equilibrium point that is beneficial for both players. The bargaining theory is used to solve this