TABLE OF CONTENTS This book is concerned with dynamic noncooperative game theory. In a nutshell, game theory involves multi-person decision making; it is dynamic if the order in which the decisions are made is important, and it is noncooperative if each person involved pursues his or her [1] own interests which are partly conflicting with others .
A considerable part of everything that has been written down, whether it is history, literature or a novel, has as its central theme a conflict situation a collision of interests. Even though the notion of conflict is as old as mankind, the scientific approach has started relatively recently, in the years around 1930, with, as a result, a still growing stream of scientific publications. We also see that more and more scientific disciplines devote time and attention to the analysis of conflicting situations. These disciplines include (applied) mathematics, economics, engineering, aeronautics, sociology, politics and mathematical finance.
It is relatively easy to delineate the main ingredients of a conflict situation: an individual has to make a decision and each possible decision leads to a different outcome or result, which are valued differently by that individual. This individual may not be the only one who decides about a particular outcome; a series of decisions by several individuals may be necessary. If all these individuals value the possible outcomes differently, the germs for a conflict situation are there.
The individuals involved, also called players or decision makers, or simply persons, do not...
