Behavioral Game Theory

Few, if any, have contributed as much to game theory as Thomas Schelling. Or, to perhaps be more accurate, surely nobody has more powerfully shown the value of applying game theory to understand the world around us. As we reflect on Schelling's contribution to knowledge, following his death in December , I think it is particularly useful to look back on one of his less touted but fundamental observations - conflict is rarely a zero-sum game.           To put Schelling's insight in perspective it is important to recognise that the early development of game theory was hugely influenced by zero-sum games. These are games in which total payoffs always sum to zero meaning that one player's gain must be another player's loss. Sporting and parlour games, like chess and bridge, are naturally modelled as zero-sum because they are about winning and losing. Zero-sum games also have some nice theoretical properties which mean they are particularly amenable to analysis. For this