The analysis of fiction or fictional worlds from an economic point of view is an interesting "hobby" of some economists, from the Economics of Harry Potter, World of Warcraft to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. There appears to be also a stream of research dealing with operas, and in particular Wagner's, which are full of intrigues, hard decisions and conflicting beliefs.
Ilias Chrissochoidis and Steffen Huck look at Lohengrin. The story is about whom to believe, commitment, signaling, normal form games, Bayesian updating, and asymmetric information. I need to listen again to Lohengrin, which I have not touched in decades. Maybe I will hear it with a new ear now that I can recognize all the Economics in it. This paper is totally useless for policy, yet fascinating.
How do you find these papers?
ReplyDeleteHuck, who chairs UCL's Economics department, seems to be the first to have applied game theory to opera:
ReplyDeletehttp://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/16562/
http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/14341/
If you happen to know of earlier efforts, let us know.
IC
You "have not touched" Lohengrin "in decades"? Does this mean that you are actually an old fart, E.L.? Next thing is that we'll hear that agentcontinuum is on social security.
ReplyDeleteThere are now two papers on applications of game theory analysis in opera, posted on the ELSE working papers archive:
ReplyDeletehttp://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/uploaded/377.pdf
http://else.econ.ucl.ac.uk/papers/uploaded/375.pdf
See also details about the UCL workshop on this topic on July 6-7, 2010:
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/~uctpshu/gamesandopera.html
I.C.