Ariel Rubinstein

Ariel Rubinstein (Hebrew: אריאל רובינשטיין; born April 13, 1951) is an Israeli economist who works in economic theory, game theory and bounded rationality.

Biography

Ariel Rubinstein is a professor of economics at the School of Economics at Tel Aviv University and the Department of Economics at New York University. He studied mathematics and economics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1972–1979 (B.Sc. Mathematics, Economics and Statistics, 1974; M.A. Economics, 1975; M.Sc Mathematics, 1976; Ph.D. Economics, 1979).

In 1982, he published "Perfect equilibrium in a bargaining model", an important contribution to the theory of bargaining. The model is known also as a Rubinstein bargaining model. It describes two-person bargaining as an extensive game with perfect information in which the players alternate offers. A key assumption is that the players are impatient. The main result gives conditions under which the game has a unique subgame perfect equilibrium and characterizes this equilibrium.

Relevance of game theory

Rubinstein has argued against the relevance of game theory to practical decision-making. He characterizes game theory as a way to abstractly describe idealized strategic situations stripped of details, but says this is useless in real life, where many details are relevant. He reports "I have not seen, in all my life, a single example where a game theorist could give advice, based on the theory, which was more useful than that of the layman."

some contend that the Euro Bloc crisis is like the games called Prisoner's Dilemma, Chicken, or Diner's Dilemma. The crisis indeed includes characteristics that are reminiscent of each of these situations. But such statements include nothing more profound than saying that the euro crisis is like a Greek tragedy. While the comparison to a Greek tragedy is seen as an emotional statement by detached intellectuals, the assignment of a label from the vocabulary of game theory is, for some reason, accepted as scientific truth.

Honours and awards

Rubinstein was elected a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (1995), a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in (1994) and the American Economic Association (1995). In 1985 he was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society, and served as its president in 2004.

In 2002, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Tilburg University.

He has received the Bruno Prize (2000), the Israel Prize for economics (2002), the Nemmers Prize in Economics (2004), the EMET Prize (2006). and the Rothschild Prize (2010).

Published works

• Bargaining and Markets, with Martin J. Osborne, Academic Press 1990
• A Course in Game Theory, with Martin J. Osborne, MIT Press, 1994.
• Modeling Bounded Rationality, MIT Press, 1998.
• Economics and Language, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
• Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory: The Economic Agent, Princeton University Press, 2006.
• Economic Fables, Open Book Publishers, 2012.
• AGADOT HAKALKALA (heb.), Kineret, Zmora, Bitan, 2009.

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients

External links

• Personal Web site
• Nash lecture