A meta review of game theory publications in the flagship US‐based OR/MS journals

This article reviews all Game Theory (GT) articles published in the three leading US‐based OR/MS journals. The articles were first subdivided into Theory or Applications categories. The Applications papers were subclassified on a five‐point scale ranging from logico‐deductive to bona fide applications. Second, the articles were classified in terms of seven types of research processes used by authors. Next, statistical analyses were performed relating to data from the above two classifications. The findings show that the OR/MS literature on GT is dominated by articles classified as Theory with no direct real world underpinnings and is based on the Ripple process (incrementalism) as a basic research strategy. The accumulation of theory vs. applications papers has been growing exponentially over time and this is also true of the marginal contributions, e.g. those based on the Ripple process. Nevertheless, GT has been found to have a higher percentage of true applications than some other OR/MS subdisciplines. Yet, this percentage is lower for GT than for the total coverage in the above journals.