Non Zero Sum Games

Recently there was no satisfactory theory either to describe how people should play non-zero games or to explain how they actually play that game

Nigel Howard (1966) developed a method which explains how most people play non-zero sum games concerning any number of persons

Illustration

Each individual farmer can maximize his own income by maximizing the amount of crops such he produces. While all farmers follow this policy the supply exceeds demand and the prices fall or decrease. On other hand they can agree to reduce the production and remain the prices high

• It creates a dilemma to the farmer
• It is an demonstration of a non zero sum game
• Similarly marketing problems are non-zero sum games as elements of advertising come in. in that cases the market may be split in proportion to the money spent on advertising multiplied by an effectiveness factor