In this episode Christian Paul, principal at TWS Partners, explains why many companies are struggling to reach their targets in reducing carbon gas emissions. He argues that this challenge is fundamentally connected to how companies set their internal targets and how the mechanisms are designed to reach these targets. Here, game theory can create incentive structures to effectively reduce carbon emissions – and more importantly - internally identify opportunities to reduce these emissions at the lowest internal costs. Christian mentions the annual letter from Larry Fink, CEO of the investment company Blackrock (you can find the letter here: https://www.blackrock.com/corporate/investor-relations/larry-fink-ceo-letter). We were talking to Christian last year, so he is referring to Larry Fink’s letter from January 2020

We discuss with researcher Tobias Riehm which economic reasons cause long waiting lists for parents to find daycare centres for their children in Germany. We find that knowledge from game theory can help to develop a significantly smoother allocation which can help all: children, parents and the daycare centres.

We discuss with TWS Partners’ CEO Marcus Schreiber which economic reasons led to the impressively short development time for a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Marcus describes that risk mitigation and clever incentive structures set by the governments significantly contributed to this success story. This can be seen as a prime example for market design, a subfield of game theory. For our German listeners: You can read more on this topic in Marc’s column in the Handelsblatt (https://www.handelsblatt.com/meinung/kolumnen/expertenrat/schreiber/expertenrat-marcus-schreiber-gut-dass-staaten-die-impfstoffentwicklung-nicht-allein-dem-markt-ueberlassen/26663870.html)

We discuss with Professor of Economics Abhinay Muthoo, University of Warwick, a fundamental model of game theory: the Prisoners Dilemma. We not only explore its theoretical background but even more how it can demonstrate and explain rather complex behaviours in business and everyday life.

We discuss with TWS Partners’ Managing Partner Sebastian Moritz how applying knowledge from game theory has helped to eliminate a severe disease. An important part in this discussion will be to understand that setting the focus on prices of drugs alone may not always result in a functioning market, let a alone the desired outcome.

With our guest Prof. Achim Wambach, PhD, president of the ZEW, we discuss what this year's Economics Nobel Prize laureates Paul Milgrom and Robert Wilson have contributed to game theory and auction theory. Here, we look at both: rather theoretical concepts but also their direct applications.