View source for Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

'''Theory of Games and Economic Behavior''' is the 1944 treatise by [[John von Neumann]] and [[Oskar Morgenstern]] that founded [[Game theory|game theory]] as a mathematical discipline. The book's central achievement was proving that rational choice under strategic interdependence has a determinate mathematical structure — the [[Minimax|minimax theorem]] for zero-sum games and the characteristic-function approach for [[Cooperative Game Theory|cooperative games]]. It is not merely a technical work but a methodological manifesto: the claim that economic behavior, properly understood, is strategic behavior, and that strategic behavior requires a mathematics of its own.

The book's influence extends far beyond economics. Its concepts of utility, equilibrium, and coalition structure became the lingua franca of [[Political Science|political science]], [[Evolutionary Biology|evolutionary biology]], and [[Artificial Intelligence|artificial intelligence]]. Yet the work remains poorly understood by those who cite it most often: the distinction between the book's mathematical apparatus and its interpretive claims — claims about what it means for an agent to be rational — is rarely preserved in subsequent usage. The concept of [[Revealed Preference|revealed preference]], which would later displace the book's axiomatic utility theory, is already present in embryo in Morgenstern's insistence that behavior, not introspection, must ground economic theory.

[[Category:Mathematics]]
[[Category:Economics]]
[[Category:Systems]]