The stage is the 1980s and game theory is fulfilling von Neuman and Morgenstern’s prophecy, reshaping all corners of economics: cooperative games for the Core Equivalence theorem and two-sided matching, noncooperative ones for the optimal design of auctions and a new strategic theory of industrial organisation, etc..
But Ehud is aware that more, much more, is to come: Guth, Schmittberger and Schwarze’s 1982 Ultimatum Game paper is already putting game theory at the forefront of the nascent experimental economics, and is discussed by Psychologists and Sociologists. The same year John Maynard Smith’s Evolution and the Theory of Games is inspiring much game-theoretical research spilling over into all social sciences and even into biology. Following the lead of William Riker, Peter Ordeshook, and many others the “rational choice” approach is transforming Political Science. Finally, the concepts of computational complexity and Turing machines are challenging game theorists to conceptualise bounded rationality and learning protocols, a decade before algorithmic game theory initiates a massive interface between computer science, game theory, and economics.
Ehud’s genius was to realise that game theory’s applications, realised and potential, already justified a journal encompassing them all with its own trademark, neither a Mathematics nor an Economics journal, though it would welcome these two as well.
He led GEB masterfully through an amazing 31 years, relentlessly opening it to new directions: market design, network games, behavioral models, epistemic game theory, to name but a few.
Ehud did so with grace, sharp judgment, and wise diplomacy. In his own words, it “was a lifetime labor of love”, as all respectable game theorists born before the launch of GEB and most of the others will confirm.
He be will be stepping down at the end of 2020. Herve Moulin will take the helm of the journal on January 1st, 2021.
The Officers of the Game theory Society: Jean-Jacques Herings, Matthew Jackson, Michihiro Kandori, Herve Moulin, Rakesh Vohra