Nash's first great contribution to Game Theory, FROM THE LIBRARY OF JOHN FORBES NASH, JR., 1950S

Nash's first great contribution to Game Theory
From the library of John Forbes Nash, Jr., 1950s
NASH, JR. John Forbes (1928-2015). "The Bargaining Problem." Offprint from: Econometrica, pp.155-162, Vol 18, No 2, April 1950. – "Chapter XIX. Some Experimental n-Person Games." Offprint from: Decision Processes, edited by Thrall, Coombs, and Davis, pp. 301-327, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1954. – NASH, JR. John Forbes (1928-2015) and SHAPLEY, Lloyd (1926-2016). "A Simple Three-Person Poker Game." Offprint from: Contributions to the Theory of Games (Annals of Mathematics Studies, Number 24), edited by Kuhn and Tucker, pp. 105-116, Princeton University Press, 1950. – KUHN, H.W. and TUCKER, A.W. Contributions to the Theory of Games (Annals of Mathematics Studies, Number 24). Princeton University Press, 1950.

A group of rare offprints from Nash's personal library, two of them annotated. "The Bargaining Problem" is annotated by Nash on the first page where he has commented "a bad choice of phrasing" next to the line "that they are equal in bargaining skill." Contributions to the Theory of Games, which includes Nash and Shapley's "A Simple Three-Person Poker Game" (for which an offprint is also present) has Nash's ownership signature on the first page.

"The Bargaining Problem" was Nash's first great contribution to game theory, and now regarded as a classic of modern economics. Economist and Nobel Laureate Roger Myerson notes, "By a beautiful axiomatic argument, Nash introduced a bargaining solution that was virtually unanticipated in the literature." In his biographical essay for the Nobel Prize, Nash would recall how he came to write it: "While I was still at Carnegie [Institute of Technology, now Carnegie Mellon] I took one elective course in 'International Economics' and as a result of that exposure to economic ideas and problems, arrived at the idea that led to the paper 'The Bargaining Problem' [...] And it was this idea which in turn, when I was a graduate student at Princeton, led to my interest in the game theory studies there."

Four volumes together, octavo. (Some minor soiling, rust to staples; Contributions to the Theory of Games worn and stained). Provenance: John Forbes Nash, Jr.

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