China versus USA: A game-theoretic simulation approach

Hardy Hanappi

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: This paper combines one of the central questions of contemporary political economy, id est the conflict between China and the USA, with one of the major methodological advances in modelling technique, id est game theory. Of course, such a task goes far beyond the possibilities of a single research paper, it thus remains a modest sketch of a possible approach. No formalisation attempt is independent of the content it tries to model. Therefore, the first part of the paper provides a very short synopsis of the envisaged global conflict between the two superpowers. Surprisingly, one of the historical contributors to this topic, John von Neumann, also is the scientist, which brought the methodological revolution of game theory to its full blossoming. The second part of the paper discusses von Neumann’s vision of game theory as a new formal language to describe human interaction - a somewhat different vision to the one that drove the mathematicians using his approach in the decades that followed. The third part of the paper presents a simple simulation exercise built on the ideas of the first two parts. The conclusion provides two lessons that can be learned from the paper, a methodological one and one concerning the mid-run development of the conflict between China and the USA.

Keywords: Geopolitical dynamics; Applied Game Theory; Cold War (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F01 F50 F54 F55 P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cna and nep-gth
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/123517/1/MPRA_paper_123517.pdf original version (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:123517

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany Ludwigstraße 33, D-80539 Munich, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joachim Winter ().