economics – Quanta Magazine https://www.quantamagazine.org Illuminating science Mon, 16 Sep 2024 14:10:47 -0400 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.2 A Poet of Computation Who Uncovers Distant Truths https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-poet-of-computation-who-uncovers-distant-truths-20180801/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-poet-of-computation-who-uncovers-distant-truths-20180801/#respond Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:00:08 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=61075 The post A Poet of Computation Who Uncovers Distant Truths first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Scroll down to the bottom of Constantinos Daskalakis’ web page — past links to his theoretical computer science papers and his doctoral students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — and you will come upon a spare, 21-line poem by Constantine Cavafy, “The Satrapy.” Written in 1910, it addresses an unnamed individual who is “made for fine and great works” but who, having met with small...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-poet-of-computation-who-uncovers-distant-truths-20180801/feed/ 0 In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-game-theory-no-clear-path-to-equilibrium-20170718/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-game-theory-no-clear-path-to-equilibrium-20170718/#respond Tue, 18 Jul 2017 12:20:29 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=49110 The post In Game Theory, No Clear Path to Equilibrium first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> In 1950, John Nash — the mathematician later featured in the book and film “A Beautiful Mind” — wrote a two-page paper that transformed the theory of economics. His crucial, yet utterly simple, idea was that any competitive game has a notion of equilibrium: a collection of strategies, one for each player, such that no player can win more by unilaterally switching to a different strategy.

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/in-game-theory-no-clear-path-to-equilibrium-20170718/feed/ 0 All Is Not Fair in Cake-Cutting and Math https://www.quantamagazine.org/cake-cutting-and-the-mathematics-of-fairness-20161007/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/cake-cutting-and-the-mathematics-of-fairness-20161007/#comments Fri, 07 Oct 2016 14:00:38 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=30739 The post All Is Not Fair in Cake-Cutting and Math first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> A pair of computer scientists recently settled one of the key questions in the theory of fair division: How can you allocate cake slices among a group of people in such a way that no one envies anyone else? The new cake-cutting protocol, which takes into account information like who enjoys vanilla frosting and who prefers chocolate shavings, is guaranteed to produce an “envy-free” division after a...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/cake-cutting-and-the-mathematics-of-fairness-20161007/feed/ 2 How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-problem-20161006/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-problem-20161006/#comments Thu, 06 Oct 2016 16:56:26 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=30685 The post How to Cut Cake Fairly and Finally Eat It Too first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Two young computer scientists have figured out how to fairly divide cake among any number of people, setting to rest a problem mathematicians have struggled with for decades. Their work has startled many researchers who believed that such a fair-division protocol was probably impossible. Cake-cutting is a metaphor for a wide range of real-world problems that involve dividing some continuous object...

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]]> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-algorithm-solves-cake-cutting-problem-20161006/feed/ 28 The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-neuroscience-behind-bad-decisions-20160823/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-neuroscience-behind-bad-decisions-20160823/#comments Tue, 23 Aug 2016 14:34:21 +0000 https://www.quantamagazine.org/?p=28945 The post The Neuroscience Behind Bad Decisions first appeared on Quanta Magazine

]]> Humans often make bad decisions. If you like Snickers more than Milky Way, it seems obvious which candy bar you’d pick, given a choice of the two. Traditional economic models follow this logical intuition, suggesting that people assign a value to each choice — say, Snickers: 10, Milky Way: 5 — and select the top scorer. But our decision-making system is subject to glitches.

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