Behavioral Game Theory

The UK's National Health Service is nudging ever closer to collapse. This fact is blatantly obvious to many. The political will to do anything about it is, however, sadly lacking. It is particularly disappointing that the Conservatives, in a position of strength, seem more interested in tackling the immigration 'problem' that isn't a problem, than getting to grips with the huge and pressing problem that is the health of the nation.          As I have discussed before in this blog the NHS principle of free health care is simply unworkable in the modern world. That inevitably means some people are going to have to pay for treatment. This is already happening with the slow growth of the private system. Things would be much, much better, however, if the NHS would embrace the willingness of many to pay for better treatment. The flu vaccine provides a small but useful illustration of this issue.        ...

Garrett Hardin's 1968  Science article on the Tragedy of the Commons  can easily lay claim to be one of the most cited 'game theory' articles of all time. According to Google Scholar it has a mighty impressive 27,362 citations, and counting. But, as with all well cited articles, it is not entirely clear how many people have actually read the paper. As someone who has neither cited nor read the paper I thought it was about time I educated myself. And, I was surprised by what I found.         Let us start with the modern, textbook conception of the tragedy of the commons. The focus is on common resource goods. These goods are characterised by being non-excludable and (to some extent) rivalrous. Hardin, himself, gave the example of pastureland that can be used for cattle. The pastureland is non-excludable - everyone is free to graze their cattle - and rivalrous - the more cattle that graze the less grass av...