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  4. March 2017
  5. Game Theory and Cold War Rationality: A Review Essay

Journal of Economic Literature

ISSN 0022-0515 (Print) | ISSN 2328-8175 (Online)

Game Theory and Cold War Rationality: A Review Essay

  • E. Roy Weintraub
Journal of Economic Literature
vol. 55, no. 1, March 2017
(pp. 148–61)
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Abstract

This essay reviews new histories of the role of game theory and rational decision making in shaping the social sciences, economics among them, in the postwar period. The recent books The World the Game Theorists Made by Paul Erickson and How Reason Almost Lost Its Mind: The Strange Career of Cold War Rationality by Paul Erickson, Judy Klein, Lorraine Daston, Rebecca Lemov, Thomas Sturm, and Michael Gordin raise a number of complex historical questions about the interconnections among game theory, utility theory, decision theory, optimization theory, information theory, and theories of rational choice. Moreover, the contingencies of time, place, and person call into question the usefulness of economists' linear narratives about the autonomous and progressive development of modern economics. The essay finally reflects on the challenges that these issues present for historians of recent economics.

Citation

Weintraub, E Roy. 2017. "Game Theory and Cold War Rationality: A Review Essay." Journal of Economic Literature, 55 (1): 148–61. DOI: 10.1257/jel.20161341

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • B23 History of Economic Thought: Quantitative and Mathematical
  • C70 Game Theory and Bargaining Theory: General
  • D74 Conflict; Conflict Resolution; Alliances; Revolutions
  • N42 Economic History: Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation: U.S.; Canada: 1913-