We look at two settings with asymmetric information; one side of a game knows something that the other side does not. We should always interpret attempts to communicate or signal such information taking into account the incentives of the person doing the signaling. In the first setting, information is verifiable. Here, the failure explicitly to reveal information can be informative, and hence verifiable information tends to come out even when you don't want it to. We consider examples of such information unraveling. Then we move to unverifiable information. Here, it is hard to convey such information even if you want to. Nevertheless, differentially costly signals can sometimes provide incentives for agents with different information to distinguish themselves. In particular, we consider how the education system can allow future workers to signal their abilities. We discuss some implications of this rather pessimistic view of education.

1. Introduction: Five First Lessons
2. Putting Yourselves Into Other People's Shoes
3. Iterative Deletion and the Median-Voter Theorem
4. Best Responses in Soccer and Business Partnerships
5. Nash Equilibrium: Bad Fashion and Bank Runs
6. Nash Equilibrium: Dating and Cournot
7. Nash Equilibrium: Shopping, Standing and Voting on a Line
8. Nash Equilibrium: Location, Segregation and Randomization
9. Mixed Strategies in Theory and Tennis
10. Mixed Strategies in Baseball, Dating and Paying your Taxes
11. Evolutionary Stability: Cooperation, Mutation, and Equilibrium
12. Evolutionary Stability: Social Convention, Aggression, and Cycles
13. Sequential Games: Moral Hazard, Incentives, and Hungry Lions
14. Backward Induction: Commitment, Spies, and First-mover Advantages
15. Backward Induction: Chess, Strategies, and Credible Threats
16. Backward Induction: Reputation and Duels
17. Backward Induction: Ultimatums and Bargaining
18. Imperfect Information: Information Sets and Sub-game Perfection
19. Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: Matchmaking and Strategic Investments
20. Subgame Perfect Equilibrium: Wars of Attrition
21. Repeated Games: Cooperation vs. the End Game
22. Repeated Games: Cheating, Punishment, and Outsourcing
23. Asymmetric Information: Silence, Signaling and Suffering Education
24. Asymmetric Information: Auctions and the Winner's Curse

This course is an introduction to game theory and strategic thinking. Ideas such as dominance, backward induction, Nash equilibrium, evolutionary stability, commitment, credibility, asymmetric information, adverse selection, and signaling are discussed and applied to games played in class and to examples drawn from economics, politics, the movies, and elsewhere.