History

The history of SING dates back to the beginning of the 1980s with the first meetings held in Italy. Then, subsequently, meetings were added in Spain, the Netherlands and Poland.

Italy

The first time the Italian researchers joined together for a meeting on Game Theory was due to the initiative of the mathematician Gianfranco Gambarelli and the economist Michele Grillo. On the 12th October 1983, a working day was held in Bergamo entitled: "A discussion between economists and mathematicians: recent contributions of Game Theory to Economics". From then on meetings have taken place almost annually called "Convegno di Teoria dei Giochi ed Applicazioni": in Pavia (1984, organised by Pierangelo Mori and Fioravante Patrone), Florence (1986, Andrea Battinelli), again Bergamo (1987, Gianfranco Gambarelli), Cagliari (1988, Andrea Battinelli), Modena 1989 (Gianni Ricci), Florence (1991, Piero Tani), Pisa (1992, Giacomo Costa), Genoa (1993, Fausto Mignanego and Fioravante Patrone), Siena (1995, Stefano Vannucci), Bergamo (1996, Gianfranco Gambarelli), Milan (1997, Michele Polo and Mario Gilli), Genoa (1998, Fioravante Patrone) and Bologna (1999, Elettra Agliardi). After this date, the conferences began to form part of the joint venture described later.

Spain

The first Spanish Meeting on Game Theory was organised in 1994 in Bilbao by Federico Valenciano and Jose Zarzuelo. This was followed by meetings in Santiago de Compostela (1996, organised by Ignacio García Jurado), Barcelona (1998, Carles Rafels) and Valencia (2000, Amparo Urbano). During the world meeting on Game Theory Society, organised in 2000 in Bilbao by Federico Valenciano, the idea arose of a joint venture that will be discussed later.

The Netherlands

There is no tradition of organising Dutch Game Theory conferences. Before the SING joint venture only periodic seminars were held and impromptu conferences. As far as seminars are concerned, monthly ones were organised by Stef Tijs in Nijmegen at the beginning of the 1980s; others followed in Tilburg under the responsibility of Peter Borm. Again in Tilburg, a monthly seminar has been held since the mid 1980s on the closely related area of social choice organised by Ton Storcken, Ad van Deemen, and Harrie de Swart. Several workshops on cooperative game theory have been organised by Gerard van der Laan and René van den Brink in Amsterdam and by Theo Driessen in Enschede.

Regarding conferences, in 1996 the Third International Meeting of the Society for Social Choice and Welfare was organised in Maastricht by Hans Peters and Ton Storcken. In 1998, the 8th International Symposium on Dynamic Games and Applications was organised in Maastricht-Va by Frank Thuijsman and Koos Vrieze. The first conference on Logic, Game Theory and Social Choice (LGS1) was organised in Tilburg-Oisterwijk by Harrie de Swart in 1999. In 2002, Peter Borm c.s. organised a Game Theory conference on the occasion of Stef Tijs' 65th birthday in Tilburg.

Poland

While some of the pioneering works in Game Theory are due to Polish mathematicians such as Hugo Steinhaus and Jan Mycielski, no national meeting on this area was ever established in Poland. Since 1970s the groups working on Game Theory and related topics in Warszawa and Wrocław held regular seminars that used to be rather interdisciplinary. In 2004 Andrzej Wieczorek organised an international conference in Game Theory and mathematical economics in Warszawa, and in 2008 the 13th International Symposium of Dynamic Games was organised by Andrzej Nowak in Wrocław just after SING4.

SING: the joint venture

In 2000, Federico Valenciano organised GAMES 2000, the first Meeting of the Game Theory Society in Bilbao. During this conference, Fioravante Patrone took the initiative of setting up a "joint venture" between Italy and Spain, suggesting meetings be held alternately in Italy and Spain. The agreement on this idea by the researchers involved led to the meetings in Ischia (2001), Sevilla (2002), Urbino (2003) and Elche (2004). During the meeting in Urbino, the Netherlands asked to join the Italian-Spanish alternating agreement and so SING (Spanish-Italian-Netherlands Game Theory Meeting) was set up. The first Dutch edition was organised by Hans Peters in Maastricht from 24th to 26th June 2005; the subsequent meetings are shown in the table below. It was then agreed that other European countries wishing to enter the rota had to participate first as guest organisers and only after a second participation in this role could they then actually join SING. As a result, the following countries acted as guest organisers, Poland in 2008 (Wrocław, organised by Jacek Mercik), France in 2011 (Paris, Michel Grabisch) and Hungary in 2012 (Budapest, László Kóczy). Poland will be the guest organiser for the second time in 2014 (Kraków, Izabella Stach) and so it will then become an actual member of SING. A decision has been made not to change the acronym, in view of the fact that it has become well-known, but to transform the name of the meetings from now on to "SING - European Meeting on Game Theory". The 2015 edition is scheduled to take place in St. Petersburg, organised by Leon Petrosjian. Paris Dauphine (with Stefano Moretti) and Venice (with Sergio Currarini) are candidates for the following meetings.

A Synthesis of the Joint Venture

YearNameLocation(*)Organiser
2001Italy/Spain 1IschiaIJacqueline Morgan
2002Italy/Spain 2SevillaESJesús Mario Bilbao,
Francisco Fernández
2003Italy/Spain 3UrbinoIGian Italo Bischi
2004Italy/Spain 4ElcheESJoaquín Sánchez Soriano
2005SING 1MaastrichtNLHans Peters
2006SING 2FoggiaIAndrea Di Liddo
2007SING 3MadridESJuan Tejada
2008SING 4WrocławPLGJacek Mercik
2009SING 5AmsterdamNLRené Van den Brink
2010SING 6PalermoIDario Bauso
2011SING 7ParisFRGMichel Grabish
2012SING 8BudapestHUGLászló Kóczy
2013SING 9VigoESGustavo Bergantiños
2014SING 10KrakówPLGIzabella Stach
2015SING 11St. PetersburgRUGLeon Petrosyan
(*) G=Guest Organising Country