ECON 2100 Advanced Microeconomic Theory 1
FALL 2015, Monday & Wednesday 10:30am - 11:45am, 4917 Posvar Hall
Instructor:
Luca Rigotti, 4905 Posvar Hall, luca at pitt dot edu
Office hours: Wednesday, 2:30pm to 4pm or by appointment (email).
Teaching Assistant:
Yunyun Lv, YUL197 at pitt dot edu
Recitations: Friday 10:30am, WWPH 4940
Office Hours: Monday 2:00pm to 4:00pm
Announcements:
The final exam will take place 7 December
2018 Handouts
The non General Equilibrium section of these notes originates from David Ahn lecture notes.
Lecture 1: Preference Relations and Choice Rules
Lecture 2: WARP and Rationalizable Choices, Utility Functions
Lecture 3: Preferences and Utility: Debreu's Representation Theorem
Lecture 4: Structural Properties of Utility Functions and Walrasian Demand
Lecture 5: Walrasian Demand and Indirect Utility Function Properties, Envelope Theorem
Lecture 6: Comparative Statics, Hicksian Demand and Expenditure Function, Slutsky Decomposition
Lecture 7: Monotone Comparative Statics, Finite Data, Directly and Indirectly Revealed Preferences
Lecture 8: Generalized Axiom of Revealed Preferences and Afriat's Theorem, Producer Theory, Properties of Supply, Profit and Cost
Lecture 9: Decision Making Under Uncertainty. Independence, Mixture Space Theorem, and Preference over Lotteris
Lecture 10: von Neumann & Morgenstern Expected Utility Theorem, Anscombe-Aumann Acts, State Dependent Expected Utility
Lecture 11: Anscombe-Aumann Subjective Expected Utility, Qualitative Probabilities, Paradoxes
Lecture 12: Utility of Money, Risk Aversion
midterm
Lecture 13: General Equilibrium Notation, Pareto Efficiency
Lecture 14: The Core, Social Welfare Function and Pareto Optimality
Lecture 15: Pareto Efficiency and Planner's Problem
Lecture 16: Competitive Equilibrium
Lecture 17: First Welfare Theorem and Second Welfare Theorem Counterexamples
Lecture 18: Second Welfare Theorem
Lecture 19: Differentiable Welfare Theorems, Market Excess Demand and Equilibrium
Lecture 20: Existence of a Competitive Equilibrium
Lecture 21: Uniqueness, Stability, and Gross Substitutes
Lecture 22: Dated Events, Contingent Commodities, and Arrow-Debreu Equilibrium
Lecture 23: Arrow-Debreu Equilibrium Properties
Lecture 24: Radner Equilibrium: Definition and Equivalence with Arrow-Debreu Equilibrium
Lecture 25: Equilibrium with Asset Markets, No Arbitrage and Linear Pricing
2017 Handouts
The texts for the course are:
Kreps, Microeconomic Foundations I: Choice and Competitive Markets, Princeton University Press
Mas-Collel, Whinston and Green, Microeconomic Theory, 3rd Edition.
A fantastic source for many things we will see in class is Debreu's Theory of Value. It is downloadable, but everyone should own a hard copy.
Microeconomic Theory studies how individual economic units (households and firms) make choices given the alternatives available to them; it also studies how such choices interact in the market to determine prices and allocate resources. In the microeconomic theory sequence for first year Phd students in economics, we shall build the mathematical and theoretical foundations of the basic constrained optimization framework used in microeconomics. This course is the first one in the sequence. Topics to be covered will include: consumer preferences and choice, classical demand theory, choice under uncertainty, producer theory, and general equilibrium.
The format of the course will be classroom lectures. There will be one mid term during the semester and a final exam at the end. Homeworks will be given on a weekly basis.
Grading
Problem Sets: 10%
Midterm: 30%
Final Exam: 60%
