Each period Vectum organises a research lecture in collaboration with the KE department (Quantitative Economics department), and this period’s lecture will be given by none other than Janos Flesch, one of E&OR’s most beloved professors. It will take place on Tuesday, September 27th at 19h at SBE, room TS53 C-1.03. During this lecture, Janos will present to us one of his research areas: “Stochastic games - Decision making in a dynamically changing environment”. It is a specific area of dynamic games (also called stochastic games or Markov decision problems) with only one decision maker. So whether you are a maths lover, a game theory enthusiast, or simply a curious person, this lecture will certainly spark your interest. Below is a more detailed description of the subject:

There are various situations in which decision makers have to make a sequence of decisions in a dynamically changing environment. Classical examples include the game of chess, where two decision makers (players) battle and the environment (the position on the chess board) evolves depending on the decisions (moves) of the decision makers. Another example is backgammon, where due to the uncertain outcomes of throwing dice during the game, the change of the environment (the position on the board) also depends on probabilities of events. As you can imagine, there are a large number of examples in economics, e.g., when companies, countries, or managers have to take decisions day by day depending on the market situation, which is continuously subject to changes. Apart from economics, there is also a large interest in computer science in these models (when the decision makers can also be machines, or algorithms), and even biologists have been studying them (for the case when the decision makers are animals, for example).

A formal model and mathematical discussion of such situations are provided by the theory of stochastic games. I will explain the model of stochastic games (and Markov decision problems), discuss some of their applications in economics (such as inventory management, dynamic oligopolistic competition, and fishery games), and indicate some fundamental results and open problems. As you will see, stochastic games are a mature, deep and colorful field.

After this lecture, you are also invited to come to our Committee Information Session at 20h15 during which we will shortly present the different committees. If you want to help strengthen Vectum, then make sure to join! (Note that you don’t have to join both the lecture and the presentation)

Finally, we will end the night with drinks at the Preuverij.