News
- January 20th:
- I have included the December exam in the practice questions and solutions documents.
- January 18th:
- Provisional marks for the December exam are now available on Learn. You are also welcome to come and look at my part of your exam scripts during my office hours. (See my contact page for details.)
- November 18th:
- The notes continue to be updated to improve the mathematical material (especially practice questions).
- I put all of the feedback about old exam questions into the sample solutions, so it's easier to find.
- Week 5:
- Week 4:
- Week 3:
- We finished Chapter 2 (mostly dynamic programming) and Section 3.1 (preferences and utility functions) and started Section 3.2 (time-separable preferences). In the maths bonus material, we finished Section A.2.4 (closed sets) and got up to Theorem A.9 in Section A.2.5 (open sets). You can listen to part one and part two
- Homework: Questions 2.11, 2.13, 2.14, 2.16, 3.2, 3.3. Sample solutions are available on Stuart Baumann's website, as usual.
- Week 2:
- We covered Section 2.3 (the envelope theorem), and A.2.3 (boundaries) in the bonus maths material. You can listen to part one and part two of the lectures.
- Homework: Questions 2.8, 2.9, 2.10. Sample solutions are available on Stuart Baumann's website.
- Week 1:
- We covered Chapter 1, Sections 2.1 and 2.2, and Appendix A.3. You can listen to part one (maths bonus material, and up to decreasing returns to scale). and part two (upper contour sets, quasi-concavity, the firm's problem, MRS equals price ratio)
- Homework: Questions 2.1, 2.2, 2.6, and 2.7. This week's homework won't be submitted, but it will be discussed in next week's tutorial.
Microeconomics 1
The main reference for my half of the course is Lecture notes for Microeconomics. You can download the Latex source if you want to annotate or contribute improvements to the notes.
Some practice questions (including all old exam questions) and sample solutions.
Extra Reference
Some students like an extra reference, although it is unnecessary. I will only test knowledge from my notes. Material marked with a star in the notes will only be tested in bonus questions; it is possible to get a distinction in the class without learning the starred material. My notes are closer to Varian and Kreps than MWG, but quite different from all of them. Ambitious students who would like a strong background in mathematics might want to read Maxwell Rosenlicht's (1968) "Introduction to Analysis" or Luenberger's (1969) "Optimization by Vector Space Methods". Angel de la Fuente's (2000) "Mathematical Methods and Models for Economists" is also helpful.
MWG means Mas-Colell, Whinston and Green's (1995) "Microeconomic Theory". V means Varian's (1992) "Microeconomic Analysis". K means Kreps' (1990) "A Course in Microeconomic Theory". KK means Kreps' (2013) "Microeconomic Foundations 1: Choice and Competitive Markets". SL means Stokey and Lucas (1989), "Recursive Methods in Economic Dynamics". Debreu (1960) is Topological methods in cardinal utility theory. All of these references are listed in the library's resource list system.
- Introduction
- Production
- Production Functions See: V1, MWG5, K7.1
- Profit Maximization See: V2, MWG5, K7.2
- Upper Envelopes and Value Functions See: V3, SL4, MWG5, K7.2
- Cost Functions and Dynamic Programming See: V4, SL4, MWG5, K7.3, K.A.2
- Upper Envelopes with Constraints See: V5, SL4, MWG5, K7.3
- Consumption
- Utility Functions See: V7, MWG3, K2.1
- Time Preference See: Debreu (1960), V19, SL4, SL5, MWG20, KK2.5
- Utility Maximization See: V7, MWG3, K2.2
- Consumer’s Value and Policy Functions See: V7, MWG3, K2.2, K2.3
- Expenditure Function and Policy Functions See: V7, MWG3, K2.2, K2.3
- Slutsky Decomposition See: V8, MWG3, K2.3
- Equilibrium
- Economies See V17, V18, V19, MWG16, K6.1, K6.2
- Efficient Allocations See V17, V18, V19, MWG16, MWG22, K5.2
- Equilibrium See V17, V18, V19, MWG16, K6.1
- Characterising Equilibria See V17, MWG15, MWG16, MWG20, K2.2
- Efficiency of Equilibria See V17, MWG16, K6.3
- *Existence of Equilibria See V17, MWG17, K6.4
- Implementation of Efficient Allocations See V17, MWG16, K6.3