Microeconomics I

Masters in Economics

This site provides information about the course, and materials and references useful to prepare it.

Instructor: Martin Dumav (Office Hours: by appointment.)

Class Schedule: Mondays and Wednesdays from 10:30 to 12:00 p.m.

TA: Federico Masera (Office Hours: by appointment.)

Course Description: This course provides an introduction to microeconomic theory designed to meet the needs of students in the economics Ph.D. program. Some parts of the course are designed to teach material that all graduate students should know. Others are used to introduce methodologies. The topics include some of the most fundamental topics of classical microeconomics: Consumer and Producer Theory, General Equilibrium Theory and Welfare Economics for a market economy, and Tools of Comparative Statics. .

Syllabus 2015-2016

Textbooks:

Mas-Colell, M. Whinston and J.Green, Microeconomic Theory, Oxford 1995. (MWG)
D. Kreps, A course in Microeconomic Theory, Princeton U Press, 1990
G. Jehle, and P. Reny, Advanced Microeconomic Theory, Prentice-Hall 2000

Course Outline and Readings:

The following list provides main structure of the course and related material in MWG.

1.	Consumer Theory: preference, utility functions, utility maximization, demand functions, indirect utility functions, expenditure minimization, duality, comparative statics, revealed preference (Chapters 1 to 4)
2.	Social Choice Theory: preferences aggregation, social choice functions, Arrow's Theorem (Chapter 21)
3,	Production Choice: technology, production sets, profit maximization and cost minimization, input demands, supply function (Chapter 5)
4.	Choice under Uncertainty: expected utility theory (Chapter 6)
5.	Partial Equilibrium: supply and demand, equilibrium in competitive markets, efficiency, taxes, subsidies, price controls (Chapter 10)
7.	General Equilibrium in Competitive Economies: partial and general equilibrium, existence of competitive equilibrium, cooperative and non-cooperative foundations of the competitive equilibrium, welfare theorems (Chapter 15 to 18)

EXAM:

The course will be graded on the basis of problem sets, a midterm and a final exam. Problem sets will be due in class on assigned lecture dates. They will be graded on a check-, check, check+ basis.

The grades on the problem sets are intended primarily to give you an idea of how you are doing in the course and will affect course grades only for students with borderline scores on the exam. You may work in groups, but please do the write-ups individually. We do not expect to see identical answers from different students.

Web page:
http://www.eco.uc3m.es/docencia/microi-phd/index.html