2015

What exactly is game theory? How can it help Greece to negotiate a solution to its debt crisis? And can it help us understand the current dysfunction in policymaking in the Eurozone? 

In a new op-ed article written for The Conversation, Professor Rob Gilles discusses how the mathematics of decision making can be used to understand the actions of Yanis Varoufakis, Greece’s finance minister and chief negotiator with Germany. 

Gilles, who is a Professor of Theoretical Economics at Queen’s Management School, concludes that Varoufakis has not been able to wisely use the lessons from game theory in his own political work. 

Until taking office earlier this year, Varoufakis was himself an academic game theorist. His media appearances demonstrate that he is very able to explain after the fact what is happening in negotiations on Greek debt using game theoretic reasoning. But Gilles argues that Varoufakis’s academic background puts him at no advantage in his actual negotiations with the Troika. 

The full text of Gilles’s op-ed article, published on 23 March 2015, can be viewed over at The Conversation, an independent source of news and views, sourced from the academic and research community and delivered direct to the public.

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