Abstract
Nash originated general non-cooperative game theory in seminal articles in the early 1950s by formally distinguishing between non-cooperative and cooperative models and by developing the concept of equilibrium for non-cooperative games. Nash developed the first bargaining solution characterized by axioms, pioneered methods and criteria for relating cooperative-theory solution concepts and non-cooperative games, and also made fundamental contributions in mathematics. Nash was the 1994 recipient of the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, jointly with John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten.
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Bibliography
Items indicated with an asterisk provide good further background reading on John F. Nash, Jr. Also, the Scandinavian Journal of Economics, vol. 97, issue 1 (1995), contains articles on John Nash and his co-Nobel Prize recipients, John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten. For a complete list of Nash’s publications, including his papers in pure mathematics, see Milnor (1998).
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Crawford, V.P. 2002. John Nash and the analysis of strategic behavior. Economics Letters 75: 377–382.
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Hammerstein, P., et al. 1996. The work of John Nash in game theory: Nobel seminar, December 8, 1994. Journal of Economic Theory 69: 153–185.
Kalisch, C., J. Milnor, J. Nash, and E. Nering. 1954. Some experimental n-person games. In Decision processes, ed. R.M. Thrall, C.H. Coombs, and R.L. Davis. New York: Wiley.
Mayberry, J.P., J.F. Nash, and M. Shubik. 1953. A comparison of treatments of a duopoly situation. Econometrica 21: 141–154.
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*Milnor, J. 1995. A Nobel Prize for John Nash. The Mathematical Intelligencer 17: 11–17.
*Milnor, J. 1998. John Nash and ‘a beautiful mind’. Notices of the American Mathematical Society 45: 1329–1332.
Myerson, R.B. 1999. Nash equilibrium and the history of economic theory. Journal of Economic Literature 37: 1067–1082.
*Nasar, S. 1998. A beautiful mind. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Nash Jr., J.F. 1950a. Equilibrium points in n-person games. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA 36: 48–49.
Nash Jr., J.F. 1950b. Non-cooperative games. Doctoral dissertation, Princeton University.
Nash Jr., J.F. 1950c. The bargaining problem. Econometrica 18: 155–162.
Nash Jr., J.F. 1951. Non-cooperative games. Annals of Mathematics 54: 286–295.
Nash Jr., J.F. 1953. Two-person cooperative games. Econometrica 21: 128–140.
*Nash Jr., J.F. 1995. Autobiography. In Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1994, ed. Frängsmyr, T. Stockholm: Nobel Foundation. Online. Available at http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/1994/nash-autobio.html. Accessed 29 Nov 2006.
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von Neumann, J. 1928. Zur theories der gesellschaftsspiele. Mathematische Annalen 100: 295–320. English translation by S. Bergmann in Contributions to the theory of games IV, ed. R. D. Luce and A. W. Tucker. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959.
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Acknowledgments
The author thanks Vincent Crawford, Joel Sobel and Martin Dufwenberg for comments on a preliminary draft.
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Watson, J. (2018). Nash, John Forbes (Born 1928). In: The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1957
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95189-5_1957
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