game theory

Group of mathematical theories, developed in 1944 by German-born US mathematician Oscar Morgenstern and Hungarian-born US mathematician John Von Neumann, that seeks to abstract from invented game-playing scenarios and their outcome the essence of situations of conflict and/or cooperation in the real political, business, and social world.

A feature of such games is that the rationality of a decision by one player will depend on what the others do; hence game theory has particular application to the study of oligopoly (a market largely controlled by a few producers).