The ICMS Christmas lecture - Economics with no prices and no games

The ICMS Christmas lecture - Economics with no prices and no games

The lecture is based on a new book co-authored with Michael Richter (the book is downloadable freely from this link https://arielrubinstein.org). While current economic theory focuses on prices and games, this book models economic settings where harmony is established through one of the following societal conventions:

• A power relation according to which stronger agents are able to force weaker ones to do things against their will.

• A norm that categorizes actions as permissible or forbidden.

• A status relation over alternatives which limits each agent's choices.

• Systematic biases in agents' preferences.

These four conventions are analysed using simple and mathematically straightforward models, without any pretensions regarding direct applied usefulness. While we do not advocate for the adoption of any of these conventions specifically – we do advocate that when modelling an economic situation, alternative equilibrium notions should be considered, rather than automatically reaching for the familiar approaches of prices or games.

The ICMS Christmas lecture will be delivered by Professor Ariel Rubinstein.

Ariel Rubinstein was born in Jerusalem and received his PhD from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1979. He has been a Professor at the Hebrew University and at Princeton and currently is a Professor (Emeritus) at Tel Aviv University and a Professor of Economics at New York University.

He has served as the President of the Econometric Society (2004). He is a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Economic Association, an Elected Fellow of the Israeli Academy of Sciences and Elected Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy.

His 8 books reflect his research interests: Bargaining and Markets (with M. Osborne) (1990), A Course in Game Theory (with M. Osborne) (1994), Modeling Bounded Rationality (1998), Economics and Language (2000), Lecture Notes in Microeconomics (2005), Models of Microeconomic Theory (with M.Osborne) (2020) and No Prices, No Games (with M.Richter)(2024). His book Economic Fables (2012) presents his general views about Economic Theory.

He created and manages the Atlas of Cafes (where one can think). All his books and articles are accessed through his homepage https://arielrubinstein.tau.ac.il.

Host or Publisher International Centre for Mathematical Sciences