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An introduction to the science of nonviolence, mainly as seen through the life and work of Mahatma Gandhi. Historical overview of nonviolence East and the West up to the American Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King, Jr., with emphasis on the ideal of principled nonviolence and the reality of mixed or strategic nonviolence in practice, especially as applied to problems of social justice and defense.
This course is an introduction to study of strategic interaction in political applications. Use of game theory and other formal modeling strategies to understand politics are also studied in order to gain a better understanding of politics at large.
This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere.
A situation involves strategic interaction if the best course of action of one agent depends on what others are going to do and vice-versa. These situations include, for example, the competition among firms in an oligopolistic market, the struggle between candidates in an election campaign, the wage bargaining between a worker and an employer, and the rivalry between states locked in an arms race. Although originally developed and applied ...more
Patrick provides strategic counsel to a wide variety of QGA's energy clients, primarily in the clean technology space, including solar, wind, recycling, and biomass. He also represents startup firms using venture capital to develop clean energy technology. He has an acute understanding of the various, complex aspects of the new public policy proposals that will shape the nation's energy future. He helps educate public policy leaders about ...more
Capitalism: Success, Crisis and Reform (PLSC 270) Professor Rae discusses the case TXU v. EDF, about an electric company private equity deal that involves environmental interest groups. Professor Rae structures the discussion by contrasting the deal as viewed from the perspective of Austin, TX and Washington DC. Actors in both locations prioritize different aspects of the deal differently. The case highlights the importance of the "custom...more
Going back to 1998, Symantec was best known for Norton utilities and Norton anti-virus, says Thompson. When he arrived in 1999, right after windows 1998 was launched. Symantec had had a bad series of quarter. In his first 100 days, he looked at the company product portfolio and found products that were not of strategic value. The brightest star was Norton anti-virus. Symantec had viewed itself as a consumer oriented desktop software compan...more
"State Programs: Integrated Resource Planning, Renewable Portfolio Standards, Net Metering and Renewable Energy Credits (Continued) & an Introduction to Local Government Programs: Municipal Utilities, Coops, and Community Aggregators - September 10, 2008 A look at the state laws about requiring energy service providers to maintain a specified mix of renewable resources. In addition, an effort to create tradable renewable energy credits ra...more
We introduce Game Theory by playing a game. We organize the game into players, their strategies, and their goals or payoffs; and we learn that we should decide what our goals are before we make choices. With some plausible payoffs, our game is a prisoners' dilemma. We learn that we should never choose a dominated strategy; but that rational play by rational players can lead to bad outcomes. We discuss some prisoners' dilemmas in the real w...more
We first consider the alternative "Bertrand" model of imperfect competition between two firms in which the firms set prices rather than setting quantities. Then we consider a richer model in which firms still set prices but in which the goods they produce are not identical. We model the firms as stores that are on either end of a long road or line. Customers live along this line. Then we return to models of strategic politics in which it i...more
In the first half of the lecture, we consider the chain-store paradox. We discuss how to build the idea of reputation into game theory; in particular, in setting like this where a threat or promise would otherwise not be credible. The key idea is that players may not be completely certain about other players' payoffs or even their rationality. In the second half of the lecture, we stage a duel, a game of pre-emption. The key strategic ques...more
