Juuso Toikka is Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Wharton School and Associate Professor of Economics (by courtesy) at the School of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania. His research is in the field of microeconomic theory, specifically in game theory, contract theory, and the economics of intellectual property rights. A central theme in Professor Toikka’s work is the focus on the role of information in shaping cooperation and competition in economic and social situations. His recent research studies incentive contracts that guarantee good performance in a wide range of settings.
Professor Toikka received his PhD from the Stanford University in 2010. Prior to joining Wharton in 2018, he was first Assistant Professor and then the Gary Loveman Career Development Associate Professor of Economics at MIT. Toikka has also taught as a visiting professor at Harvard and Yale.
Toikka is a co-editor of Theoretical Economics, a member of the editorial board at the American EconomicReview, and an associate editor of Econometrica, as well as a past associate editor of Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of the European Economic Association, and Theoretical Economics.
The objective of this course is to make you more skilled in strategic reasoning. Strategic situations permeate our lives and we will examine many such situations through the lens of game theory. The course is composed of game-theoretic concepts, applications, and experiential learning. The bulk of the applications are to business situations including product entry, bargaining, managerial incentive contracts, and network effects. Given the ubiquitous presence of strategic situations in human societies, applications will also extend to politics, war, sports, history, crime, theology, and every day life, and cover such topics as steroid use in sports, traffic congestion, corruption, racial discrimination, and sexual harassment. Students will regularly participate in experiments involving strategic reasoning, and form teams to compete in a simulated industry environment.