Reinhard Selten - Biography

Reinhard Selten (born 5 October 1930) is a German economist.

Life and career

Selten was born in Breslau (Wrocław) in Lower Silesia, now in Poland, to a Jewish father, Adolf Selten, and Protestant mother, Käthe Luther. For his work in game theory, Selten won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash). He is also well known for his work in bounded rationality, and can be considered as one of the founding fathers of experimental economics. He developed an example of a game called Selten's Horse because of its extensive form representation. He is noted for his publishing in non-refereed journals to avoid being forced to make unwanted changes to his work.

Selten is professor emeritus at the University of Bonn, Germany, and holds several honorary doctoral degrees. He has been an Esperantist since 1959., and met his wife through the Esperanto movement. He is a member and co-founder of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.

For the European Parliament election, 2009, he was the top candidate for the German wing of Europe – Democracy – Esperanto.

Bibliography

• Preispolitik der Mehrproduktenunternehmung in der statischen Theorie, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. (1970) – in German
• General Equilibrium with Price-Making Firms (with Thomas Marschak), Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. (1974)
• A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press. (1988)
• Models of Strategic Rationality, Theory and Decision Library, Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research, Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (1988)
• Enkonduko en la Teorion de Lingvaj Ludoj – Ĉu mi lernu Esperanton? (with Jonathan Pool), Berlin-Paderborn: Akademia Libroservo, Institut für Kybernetik. (1995) – in Esperanto
• Game Theory and Economic Behavior: Selected Essays, 2. vol Cheltenham-Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. (1999)
• New edition of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988), with a Chinese Introduction. Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
• Chinese Translation of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988). Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
• Russian Translation of: A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press. (2000)

See also

• List of economists
• Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
• Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium

External links

• Laboratory for Experimental Economics, at the University of Bonn, Germany
• Reinhard Selten – Autobiography
• IDEAS/RePEc
• Economista alemán, nacido en Breslau (actualmente Wroclaw, en Polonia).