Hi. I'm Jim Morrow. I'm a professor of political 
 science here at the University of Michigan,
and I teach the Advanced Game Theory course in 
 the second session of the Summer Program.
My area of specialization is international politics, and my research uses game theoratic models
to explore issues in international politics on a variety of different issues.
This course takes students who have one course in game theory
and gives them an introduction to higher-level, more sophisticated models
through the presentation of research papers that use these methods to make different arguments.
So in a typical class, then, we will take a paper,
I will take it apart, explain what the question 
 is the paper's designed to be about,
and present the model, both what the model is,
how it's a representation of a particular research question,
and the equilibrium of it, and also the way to 
 analyze what results can be produced out of it.
So the object is first and foremost to help students develop their ability
to write down and solve sophisticated models
and secondly to introduce them to papers they 
 may be interested in in the literature,
that they may find useful to build off of in 
 their own research, in one form or another.
The range of topics we cover here: we 
 start with some relatively simple game theory
that you could learn, for example, in the introduction 
 to game theory course in the first session,
such as backward induction.
We then consider some signaling models, in which 
 the players learn about one another's types
through the play of the game
and then move on to more advanced topics, such as repeated games
and then move on to more advanced topics, such as repeated games
and then end up with about a week and a half on Stochastic games,
which are some of the most sophisticated tools used in the literature now.
Most of the papers I cover are drawn 
 in the areas of international comparative politics,
because that's where my specific research interests are, and I know those literatures best.
But I'm also open to students proposing papers that 
 they would like me to cover in class.
In terms of the workload of the class, 
 there are a series of problem sets,
because modeling is an exercise that you have to 
 do, to learn how to use it.
Secondly I ask at least some participants to try to write a paper
where they develop an original model of their 
 own, which can actually be quite simple,
so that we can talk about the process of 
 how you go from a research question
to a model, solve the model, and then back to answering the research question.
