Contributions To The Theory Of Games Volumes 1-IV.

VON NEUMANN, John; John F. Nash; Kenneth J. Arrow; Robert J. Aumann; Philip Wolfe; John Milnor; Martin Shubik; W.H. Fleming.

$42,500.00

Item Number: 48080

Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1950-1959.

First edition of each work in this ground-breaking four volume work on game theory. Octavo, 4 volumes, original orange wrappers. Volume one is signed by contributors John von Neumann and John Nash on the title page. Contains the article by the Nobel Prize-winning economist entitled, “A Simple Three Person Poker Game.” Volume II is signed by contributors Kenneth J. Arrow and John Milnor. Volume III is signed by contributors W.H. Fleming and Philip Wolfe on the title page. Volume IV is signed by contributors Robert J. Aumann and Martin Shubik. In near fine condition with some rubbing and wear. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. An exceptional set, most rare and desirable signed by von Neumann and other contributors.

Volume I contains: G.W. Brown & John Von Neumann, “Solutions of Games by Differential Equations” (pp. 73-79); John Nash & Lloyd Shapley’s important paper: “A Simple Three-person Poker Game” (105-16), and other papers by Hermann, Weyle, Gale, Dresher, Kuhn, McKinsey, et al. Volume II contains: Lloyd Shapley’s “A Value for n-Person Games” (pp. 307-17): A “remarkable 1953 paper… There he proposed that it might be possible to evaluate, in a numerical way, the ‘value’ of playing a game. The particular function he derived for this purpose, which has come to be called the Shapley value, has been the focus of sustained interest among students of cooperative game theory ever since” (Alvin Roth, who shared the 2012 Nobel Prize with Shapley, Chapter 1: ‘Introduction to the Shapley Value,’ in Roth, The Shapley Value: Essays in Honor of Lloyd S. Shapley, Cambridge University Press, 1988). Also contains Von Neumann’s “A Certain Zero-Sum Two-Person Game Equivalent to the Optimal Assignment Problem” (pp. 5-12) and D.B. Gillies, J.P. Mayberry, & Von Neumann, “Two Variants of Poker” (pp. 13-50). The latter is the supplement to Von Neumann and Morgenstern’s Theory of Games and Economic Behavior promised in the footnote on p. 196 of the second edition. Volume III contributors include Gale, Karlin, Kemeny, Oxtoby, Scarf, Shapley, et al. Volume IV contributors include Nobel Laureates Harsanyi, Aumann, and Shapley, as well as Kalisch, Von Neumann (“On the Theory of Games of Strategy,” pp. 13-42), Shubik, et al. Shapley won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for 2012, commonly known as the Nobel Prize in Economics.