The Economics of Markets (Microeconomics)
This syllabus is only as an informative orientation for new students.
Every academic year, professors will give to the students the updated syllabus with the exact contents and evaluation system.
Miguel García-Cestona (UAB)
miguel.garcia.cestona@uab.cat
Aleix Calveras (UIB)
aleix.calveras@uib.es
Objectives
This course wants to provide a relatively non-technical approach to modern microeconomic theory. Most of the topics covered after the first four weeks of the term will involve thinking strategically about various sorts of economic problems. The main message we want to get through is that many situations can best be analyzed by (1) thinking about what's really going on in the "real world", (2) making use of the tools of microeconomics to re-interpret the problem and develop a simple model, and (3) thinking carefully about how to solve the model. (In fact, (2) and (3) go together.) Once you understand a simple model intimately, you can figure out in which ways it can and cannot be generalized. This will be illustrated in several areas, including information problems, certain aspects of monopoly theory, and oligopoly theory. We will follow two approaches in this course. Firstly, the student will learn the topics covered in a traditional course such as: consumer theory, firms’ decision-making and market structure, general equilibrium as well as information theory. Secondly, the student will be exposed to an alternative microeconomic theory, which addresses the endogeneity of preferences, the embeddedness of economic decision-making and the evolution of institutions. In both cases, the student will handle mathematical techniques for dealing with these issues. Therefore, by the end of the course the student will have enough bases to rigorously approach all sorts of topics covered in business strategy, corporate governance, finance and the theory of organizations.
Contents
Sessions:
- Economics as a Behavioral Science.
- Consumer Behavior
- Choice under Uncertainty
- Production Theory and Production Costs
- Profit Maximization and Monopoly
- Monopoly II and Study Case: Newsprint.
- Some exercice, review and answers to PSets
- Midterm Exam.
- Monopoly II, Vertical Integration
- Market Power. Oligopoly Theory
- More Oligopoly Theory.
- More on Competition
- Final Exam
Course Evaluation:
The requirements for the course will include several problem sets, two or three cases, one presentation (to be confirmed) and two exams. You are free to work together in small groups (3-4 people) on the problem sets (in fact, I encourage you to do so), but I prefer that each person hands in a separate answer. Every week, I will ask a different group to comment on some exercise or a reading. Final grades will be determined by the assignments (10%), the exams (30% + 40%), and my subjective estimation of what you have contributed to class discussion (and the presentations) (another 20%), especially on days that we discuss exercises and cases.
Textbooks
- Bowles, Samuel (2004); "Microeconomics, Behavior, Institutions and Evolution"; Rusell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press
- Kreps, David (1990); "A Course in Microeconomic Theory"; Princeton University Press.
- Varian, Hal (2010); "Intermediate Microeconomics"; W. W. Norton Company.
