Game theory purports to provide a unifying framework with which to analyze and predict the emergence and evolution of social behavior and organization in any of a wide variety of contexts in which human (or plant or animal) agents interact. Economic applications include the analysis of firms' strategic behavior in concentrated markets, the emergence of trust and cooperation out of anarchy, financial bubbles or panics, and any of a number of other situations where individually rational behavior may or may not lead to socially desirable outcomes. Asymmetric information economics and mechanism-design extend game theory by exploring how the design of the rules of a game and the control of information affect equilibrium outcomes and therefore how people might choose to set up the rules to govern their interactions. Questions addressed include the design of compensation and incentive contracts; voting models and political-economic equilibria; why insurance contracts specify deductibles and why so many people are uninsured in our society; how firms choose their financial structure and why some firms are credit-rationed, etc. Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: problem sets, midterm, final, and paper. Prerequisites: Economics 251; Mathematics 104 or permission from the instructor. Enrollment limit: 20.