Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

This is the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together blossomed, in 1944, when Princeton University Press published Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. In it, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern conceived a groundbreaking mathematical theory of economic and social organization, based on a theory of games of strategy. Not only would this revolutionize economics, but the entirely new field of scientific inquiry it yielded--game theory--has since been widely used to analyze a host of real-world phenomena from arms races to optimal policy choices of presidential candidates, from vaccination policy to major league baseball salary negotiations. And it is today established throughout both the social sciences and a wide range of other sciences.


This sixtieth anniversary edition includes not only the original text but also an introduction by Harold Kuhn, an afterword by Ariel Rubinstein, and reviews and articles on the book that appeared at the time of its original publication in the New York Times, tthe American Economic Review, and a variety of other publications. Together, these writings provide readers a matchless opportunity to more fully appreciate a work whose influence will yet resound for generations to come.

"One cannot but admire the audacity of vision, the perseverance in details, and the depth of thought displayed in almost every page of the book. . . . The appearance of a book of [this] calibre . . . is indeed a rare event."

"The main achievement of the book lies, more than in its concrete results, in its having introduced into economics the tools of modern logic and in using them with an astounding power of generalization."

"While the jury is still out on the success or failure of game theory as an attempted palace coup within the economics community, few would deny that interest in the subject--as measured in numbers of journal page--is at or near an all-time high. For that reason alone, this handsome new edition of von Neumann and Morgenstern's still controversial classic should be welcomed by the entire research community."---James Case, SIAM News

"Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "Opinions still vary on the success of the project to put economics on a sound mathematical footing, but game theory was eventually hugely influential, especially on mathematics and the study of automata. Every self-respecting library must have one.""---Mike Holderness, New Scientist

"Praise for Princeton's previous edition: "A rich and multifaceted work. . . . [S]ixty years later, the Theory of Games may indeed be viewed as one of the landmarks of twentieth-century social science.""---Robert J. Leonard, History of Political Economics