ATS1053 · Strategic reasoning in politics, philosophy and economics

Overview

In this unit you will be introduced to strategic reasoning and game theory as tools for understanding social, political, and economic interactions. You will learn to analyse situations where your outcomes depend not just on your own choices, but on the choices of others—from international negotiations and market competition to everyday social cooperation and conflict. Through a combination of theoretical analysis and practical applications, you will develop skills in modelling strategic situations, predicting outcomes, and understanding why well-intentioned policies sometimes produce unintended consequences. This analytical toolkit will be valuable whether you pursue careers in public policy, business, or civic engagement—or simply seek to better understand the strategic dynamics shaping our social world

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

Within semester assessment:100%

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. demonstrate understanding of strategic interactions using game theory concepts such as Nash equilibrium, dominant strategies, and backward induction to analyse decision-making scenarios;
2. analyse cooperation problems and explain factors that can facilitate or hinder collaborative outcomes;
3. apply strategic reasoning to real-world phenomena such as political competition, market behaviour, social norms, and policy implementation, identifying why seemingly rational individual choices can produce suboptimal collective outcomes;
4. evaluate policy interventions by predicting how actors might respond to incentives, rules, or information.

Workload

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.