Reinhard Justus Reginald Selten (5 October 1930 – 23 August 2016) was a German economist, who won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash). He is also well known for his work in bounded rationality, and can be considered as one of the founding fathers of experimental economics.

Selten was born in Breslau (Wrocław) in Lower Silesia, now in Poland, to a Jewish father, Adolf Selten, and Protestant mother, Käthe Luther. Reinhard Selten was raised as Protestant.

He studied mathematics at Goethe University Frankfurt and obtained his diploma in 1957. He then worked as scientific assistant to Heinz Sauermann until 1967. In 1959, he married with Elisabeth Lang Reiner. They had no children. In 1961 he also received his doctorate in Frankfurt in mathematics with a thesis on the evaluation of n-person games.

He was a visiting professor at Berkeley, and taught from 1969 to 1972 at the Free University of Berlin and from 1972 to 1984 at the University of Bielefeld. He then accepted a professorship at the University of Bonn. There he built the BonnEconLab, a laboratory for experimental economic research, on which he has been active even after his retirement.

Selten was professor emeritus at the University of Bonn, Germany, and held several honorary doctoral degrees. He had been an Esperantist since 1959, and met his wife through the Esperanto movement. He was a member and co-founder of the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.

For the 2009 European Parliament election, he was the top candidate for the German wing of Europe – Democracy – Esperanto.

Work

For his work in game theory, Selten won the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences (shared with John Harsanyi and John Nash), see also Subgame perfect Nash equilibrium.

He is also well known for his work in bounded rationality, and can be considered as one of the founding fathers of experimental economics. He developed an example of a game called Selten's Horse because of its extensive form representation.

He is noted for his publishing in non-refereed journals to avoid being forced to make unwanted changes to his work.

Bibliography

• Preispolitik der Mehrproduktenunternehmung in der statischen Theorie, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. (1970) – in German
• General Equilibrium with Price-Making Firms (with Thomas Marschak), Lecture Notes in Economics and Mathematical Systems, Berlin-Heidelberg-New York: Springer-Verlag. (1974)
• A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press. (1988)
• Models of Strategic Rationality, Theory and Decision Library, Series C: Game Theory, Mathematical Programming and Operations Research, Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (1988)
• Enkonduko en la Teorion de Lingvaj Ludoj – Ĉu mi lernu Esperanton? (with Jonathan Pool), Berlin-Paderborn: Akademia Libroservo, Institut für Kybernetik. (1995) – in Esperanto
• Game Theory and Economic Behavior: Selected Essays, 2. vol Cheltenham-Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing. (1999)
• New edition of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988), with a Chinese Introduction. Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
• Chinese Translation of: Models of Strategic Rationality (1988). Outstanding Academic Works on Economics by Nobel Prize Winners. Dordrecht-Boston-London: Kluwer Academic Publishers. (2000)
• Russian Translation of: A General Theory of Equilibrium Selection in Games (with John C. Harsanyi), Cambridge, MA: MIT-Press. (2000)