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From David Friedman, Hidden Order, p. 147 & 166

So far in this book, I have almost entirely ignored an important feature of human interaction and many markets – bargaining, threats, bluffs, the whole gamut of strategic behaviour. That is one of the reasons why much of economic theory is such a bloodless abstraction. We are used to seeing human society as a clash of wills, whether in the boardroom, on the battlefield, or in our favourite soap opera. Economics presents it instead in terms of solitary individuals or small teams of producers, each calmly maximising against an essentially non-human environment, an opportunity set rather than a population of self-willed human beings.

There is a reason for doing economics this way. The analysis of strategic behaviour is an extraordinarily difficult problem. John von Neumann, arguably one of the smartest men of this century, created a whole new branch of mathematics in the process of failing to solve it. The work of his successors, while often ingenious and mathematically sophisticated, has not brought us much closer to being able to say what people will or should do in such situations. Seen from one side, what is striking about price theory is the unrealistic picture it presents of the world around us. Seen from the other, one of its most impressive accomplishments is to explain a considerable part of what is going on in real markets while avoiding, with considerable ingenuity, any situation involving strategic behaviour.

…

I hope I have convinced you that game theory is a fascinating maze. It is also, in my judgement, one that sensible people avoid when possible. There are too many ways to go, too many problems that have either no solution or an infinite number of them. Game theory is a great deal of fun… but as a way of doing economics it is a desperation measure, to be employed only when all easier alternatives fail.

Many mathematical economists would disagree with that conclusion. If one of them were writing this book, he would assure you that only game theory holds any real hope of introducing adequate mathematical rigour to economics, that everything else is a tangle of approximations and hand waving. He might concede that game theory has not produced much useful economics yet, but he will assure you that if you give him enough time wonderful things will happen.

He may be right. As you have probably gathered by now, I have a high opinion of John von Neumann. When picking problems to work on, ones that defeated him go at the bottom of my list.