Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

John von Neumann (1903-1957) was one of the greatest mathematicians of the twentieth century and a pioneering figure in computer science. A native of Hungary who held professorships in Germany, he was appointed Professor of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in 1933. Later he worked on the Manhattan Project, helped develop the IAS computer, and was a consultant to IBM. An important influence on many fields of mathematics, he is the author of Functional Operators, Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics, and Continuous Geometry (all Princeton). Oskar Morgenstern (1902-1977) taught at the University of Vienna and directed the Austrian Institute of Business Cycle Research before settling in the United States in 1938. There he joined the faculty of Princeton University, eventually becoming a professor and from 1948 directing its econometric research program. He advised the United States government on a wide variety of subjects. Though most famous for the book he co-authored with von Neumann, Morgenstern was also widely known for his skepticism about economic measurement, as reflected in one of his many other books, On the Accuracy of Economic Observations (Princeton). Harold Kuhn is Professor Emeritus of Mathematical Economics at Princeton University. Ariel Rubinstein is Professor of Economics at Tel Aviv University and at New York University.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Theory of Games and Economic Behavior

Princeton University Press

Introduction

Although John von Neumann was without doubt "the father of game theory," the birth took place after a number of miscarriages. From an isolated and amazing minimax solution of a zero-sum two-person game in 1713 to sporadic considerations by E. Zermelo, E. Borel, and H. Steinhaus, nothing matches the path-breaking paper of von Neumann, published in 1928.

This paper, elegant though it is, might have remained a footnote to the history of mathematics were it not for collaboration of von Neumann with Oskar Morgenstern in the early '40s. Their joint efforts led to the publication by the Princeton University Press (with a $4,000 subvention from a source that has been variously identified as being the Carnegie Foundation or the Institute for Advanced Study) of the 616-page Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (TGEB).

I will not discuss here the relative contributions of the two authors of this work. Oskar Morgenstern has written his own account of their collaboration, which is reprinted in this volume; I would recommend to the reader the scholarly piece by Robert J. Leonard, who has noted that Morgenstern's "reminiscence sacrifices some of the historical complexity of the run-up to 1944" and has given a superb and historically complete account of the two authors' activities in the relevant period. On balance, I agree with Leonard that "had von Neumann and Morgenstern never met, it seems unlikely that game theory would have been developed." If von Neumann played both father and mother to the theory in an extraordinary act of parthenogenesis, then Morgenstern was the midwife.

In writing this introduction, I have several goals in mind. First, I would like to give the reader a sense of the initial reaction to the publication of this radically new approach to economic theory. Then, we shall survey the subsequent development of the theory of games, attempting to explain the apparent dissonance between the tenor of the book reviews and the response by the communities of economists and mathematicians. As a participant in this response (from the summer of 1948), my account is necessarily colored by subjective and selective recollections; this is a fair warning to the reader.

The book reviews that greeted the publication of TGEB were extraordinary, both in quantity and quality; any author would kill for such reviews. Consider the following partial list of the reviews, paying special attention to the length of these reviews, the quality of the journals, and the prominence of the reviewers:

H. A. Simon, American Journal of Sociology (1945) 3 pages* A. H. Copeland, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society (1945) 17 pages* L. Hurwicz, The American Economic Review (1945) 17 pages* J. Marschak, Journal of Political Economy (1946) 18 pages T. Barna, Economica (1946) 3 pages* C. Kaysen, Review of Economic Studies (1946) 15 pages D. Hawkins, Philosophy of Science (1946) 7 pages J.R.N. Stone, Economic Journal (1948) 16 pages E. Ruist, Economisk Tidskrift (1948) 5 pages G. Th. Guilbaud, Economie Applique (1949) 45 pages E. Justman, Revue d'Economie Politique (1949) 18 pages K.G. Chacko, Indian Journal of Economics (1950) 17 pages

The quotes from these reviews are a publisher's dream. Thus: Simon encouraged "every social scientist who is convinced of the necessity for mathematizing social theory-as well as those unconverted souls who are still open to persuasion on this point-to undertake the task of mastering the Theory of Games."

Copeland asserted: "Posterity may regard this book as one of the major scientific achievements of the first half of the twentieth century."

Hurwicz signaled that "the techniques applied by the authors in tackling economic problems are of sufficient generality to be valid in political science, sociology, or even military strategy" and concluded "the appearance of a book of the caliber of the Theory of Games is indeed a rare event."

After praising the "careful and rigorous spirit of the book," Jacob Marschak concludes: "Ten more such books and the progress of economics is assured."

If the quantity of reviews and the quality of the journals in which they were published are impressive, the choice of reviewers and their positions in the social sciences are equally impressive. Two of the reviewers, H. A. Simon and J.R.N. Stone, were awarded Nobel Memorial Prizes in Economics.

The first review to appear was that of Herbert Simon. By his own account, he "spent most of [his] 1944 Christmas vacation (days and some nights) reading [the TGEB]." Simon knew of von Neumann's earlier work and was concerned that the TGEB might anticipate results in a book that he was preparing for publication.

The first review that was directed at mathematicians was that of A. H. Copeland, a specialist in probability theory and professor at the University of Michigan. Copeland's only significant work in social science is the so-called "Copeland method" for resolving voting problems: simply, it scores 1 for each pairwise win and 31 for each pairwise loss, and declares the alternative with the highest score the winner. His review gave the mathematical community an extremely complete account of the contents of the TGEB. As is typical of almost all of the reviewers, although Copeland pointed to the research challenges opened by the TGEB, he never engaged in research in game theory as such. The only paper in his prolific output that is marginally related to game theory is a joint paper on a one-player game which must be categorized as a game of chance. Copeland's principal contribution to game theory consists in the fact that he was Howard Raiffa's thesis adviser; the book Games and Decisions, written by Raiffa with R. Duncan Luce (published by Wiley in 1957 and reprinted by Dover Publications in 1989) was the first nonmathematical exposition that made the theory of games accessible to the broad community of social scientists.

Another reviewer, David Hawkins, is permanently linked to H. A. Simon for their joint discovery of the "Hawkins-Simon conditions," a result that every graduate student in economics must study. Hawkins was a young instructor at the University of California at Berkeley when his friend, J. Robert Oppenheimer, picked him as the "official historian" and "liaison to the military" at Los Alamos, where the first atomic bomb was produced. Hawkins later had a distinguished career at the University of Colorado, where he was chosen in the first class of MacArthur "genius" scholars in 1986. Hawkins did no research in game theory.

The pattern of extravagant praise and no subsequent research is repeated with more significance in the cases of Jacob Marschak and Leonid Hurwicz. Marschak was head of the Cowles Commission at the University of Chicago when he reviewed the TGEB. He had survived a tumultuous early life that took him from Russia, where he was raised, to Berlin, where he trained as an economist, to the United States, where he ran an influential econometric seminar at the New School for Social Research. Leonid Hurwicz preceded Marschak on the staff of the Cowles Commission and continued as a consultant after Tjalling C. Koopmans became director and the commission moved from the...