Members


Christian Bach, Assistant Professor

Christian Bach

University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, bach@epicenter.name

My research mainly focuses on the epistemic foundations of game theory and on agreeing to disagree type results. In particular, I am interested in understanding the reasoning underlying classical solution concepts as well as in considering new ways of reasoning in games inspired by philosophy or psychology. Furthermore, I am investigating agreeing to disagree in various frameworks such as with lexicographic beliefs.

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Bilge Başer, Assistant Professor

Bilge BaşerMimar Sinan University at Istanbul, Turkey, bilge.baser@msgsu.edu.tr

I completed my PhD in 2017 at Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University at Istanbul (Turkey). I am interested in epistemic game theory, mathematical programming, optimization, operations research, social network analysis and statistics. My research subject during my PhD was combining epistemic game theory algorithms with optimization techniques. I tried to transform epistemic models into a mathematical programming model and develop rapid and systematic solution methods for big problems.

 

Rubén Becerril Borja, Ph.D. Student

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Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana at México City, Mexico, ruben.becerril@gmail.com

I am a PhD student at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana since September 2012. My main interest is game theory, both epistemic and classical, as my research subject concerns sequential games with an undetermined order of turns under the classical framework; this while working on rationalizability concepts for sequential games in epistemic game theory. I am also interested in stochastic processes, queueing theory and mechanism design.

I consider epistemic game theory gives a deeper understanding of concepts related to decision-making, in ways that classical game theory is not able to. I think that it is possible to study more elaborate models that have been proposed in classical game theory under an epistemic scheme to gain new insights about the reasoning processes that occur.

Stephan Jagau, Postdoctoral Researcher

University of California at Irvine, USA, sjagau@uci.edu

I am a postdoctoral scholar at IMBS (University of California, Irvine) since November 2018. I graduated from the Tinbergen Institutem writing my dissertation at CREED (University of Amsterdam) with Theo Offerman and Matthijs van Veelen.

Since July 2015, I am a member of the EpiCenter. I am interested in Epistemic Game Theory and Psychological Game Theory, Evolutionary (Game) Theory, and Judgement and Decision-Making. I find projects in these areas most interesting if theories come back-to-back with experimental testing and measurement.

My work in epistemic game theory, joint with Andrés Perea, is concerned with extending reasoning concepts for traditional games to psychological games.

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Shuige Liu, Lecturer

Shuige Liu

Waseda University, Japan, shuige.s.liu@gmail.com

I was a PhD student at Graduate School of Economics in Waseda University since April 2013 and a research associate in Faculty of Political Science and Economics of Waseda University since April 2016. I obtained my PhD in 2018. My curiosity for epistemic game theory was aroused by EPICENTER Spring Course in Epistemic Game Theory 2017. Through the stimulating teaching and discussion there I discovered many interesting topics, including the consistency of caution and rationality within an incomplete information framework, which then became the theme of two papers I completed with the help and comments of Andrés after the course. At present I am working on epistemic conditions in extensive form games. I am also interested in epistemic logics, algorithmic game theory, Kolmogorov complexity, and how to apply them in epistemic game theory. I believe that epistemic game theory provides insightful approaches for exploring individuals’ intrapersonal and interpersonal inferences in game situations, which has achieved and will lead to a better understanding of decision-making process and behavior of human beings.

 

Niels Mourmans, Ph.D.

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Maastricht University, The Netherlands, n.mourmans@maastrichtuniversity.nl

I was a PhD student at Maastricht University from September 2017 until September 2020. I also graduated at Maastricht University by completing the Master’s programme in Economic and Financial Research. My main fields of interest are Epistemic Game Theory and Behavioural Economics. I am mainly interested in studying how people’s expectations and beliefs can shape their preferences and decision processes. During my PhD-project I have more particularly focused on the field of Psychological Game Theory. Different layers in preferences and limits to rationality may also lead to different modes of reasoning and thus different decisions. As such, I believe studying the intersection of Epistemic Game Theory and Behavioural Economics to be of much importance in giving further context to experimental and empirical findings.

 

 Christian Nauerz, Ph.D.

Christian NauerzUber Amsterdam, The Netherlands, c.nauerz@googlemail.com

I completed my PhD in 2016 at Maastricht University. I am very much interested in the intersection of Epistemic Game Theory, Experimental Economics and Bounded Rationality. With the tools of Epistemic Game Theory I model boundedly rational agents and tried to understand what the resulting model says about the agents’ reasoning process. I am curious about questions like “Which steps do agents go through to form their beliefs?” or  “Do the reasoning steps implied by a solution concept correspond to what we think is a natural human approach?“.

Moreover, I am interested in the similarities and differences of existing solution concepts for Bounded Rationality in Game Theory. I belief a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses will be important to develop models that can predict experimental outcomes over a wide variety of conditions.

 

Andrés Perea, Associate Professor

Maastricht University, The Netherlands, a.perea@maastrichtuniversity.nl

My research nowadays focuses almost completely on Epistemic Game Theory — a modern approach to game theory which takes seriously the fact that we reason before making a choice. Indeed, if we must reach a decision, and know that the final result will also depend upon the decisions of other people, then it is natural to first form a belief about the likely choices of these other people. That is, we first reason about our opponents before making a choice ourselves.

Which beliefs about the opponents are plausible? What choices would we finally make if we reason in a specific way about our opponents? Can these choices be found by means of a recursive procedure? How would we change our belief in the light of new information? These are some of the main questions I am interested in.

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Joep van Sloun, PhD candidate

Maastricht University, The Netherlands, j.vansloun@maastrichtuniversity.nl

I am a PhD student at the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University as of September 2020 and I also followed the EPICENTER Summer Course on Epistemic Game Theory in 2019. My main fields of interest are Industrial Economics and Epistemic Game Theory. My research plan consists of applying solution concepts from Epistemic Game Theory to models from Industrial Economics. The aim of this research is to shed more light to the reasoning of the players in these models, compared to the more classical use of Nash equilibrium. My current research applies the rationalizability solution concept to the Hotelling model, and variations of this model. The use of rationalizability has led to different, yet intuitive results compared to the Nash equilibrium.

Elias Tsakas, Associate Professor

Elias Tsakas

Maastricht University, The Netherlands, e.tsakas@maastrichtuniversity.nl

My research interests focus on epistemic game theory, evolutionary game theory, bounded rationality, as well as behavioral economics, experimental economics and epistemic logic. In particular, I am currently working mainly on models of bounded reasoning, which explicitly incorporate standard bounded rationality assumptions into the epistemic analysis of games.

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