Topic outline

  • General

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    Antoine Mandel (Antoine.Mandel@univ-paris1.fr)
    Webpage: https://www.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/fr/mandel-antoine/

    Course in English - First Semester 2019/20120

    DU MMEF : Microeconomics 1A: Individual Decision Making

    • 18 hours of Course - Class: every Wednesday 13:00-15:00 from September 16 to November 25, 2019 - Room 117 - MSE
    • 24 hours of TD - Class: every Monday 14:00-15:30 and every Wednesday 9:00-10:30 from September 14 to November 16, 2020 - Room 117 - MSE

    QEM1 & DU MMEF : MICROECONOMICS 1

    • 24 hours of Course - Class: every Wednesday 13:00-15:00 from September 16 to December 9, 2019 - Room 117 - MSE
    • 30 hours of TD - Class: every Monday 14:00-15:30 and every Wednesday 9:00-10:30 from September 14 to December 9, 2020 - Room 117 - MSE

    Intermediate Test DU MMEF & Midterm Exam QEM1:

    Wednesday, October 19 from 9:30 to 10:30 - Room 117 - MSE

    Final Exam - DU MMEF & QEM1:

    Wednesday, December 9, 2020 from 13:00 to 15:00 - Room 117 - MSE

  • General Presentation

    The course Microeconomics 1A deals with individual decision making by producers and consumers. The rest of the course Microeconomics 1 deals with competitive equilibria and Pareto optimal allocations in pure exchange economies and in production economies.

    Course Content

    DU MMEF - Microeconomics 1A: Individual Decision Making

    • Rational Behavior, Choice, and Market Demand. Consumption set, preferences, properties of preferences, utility representation, properties of utility functions, examples. Choice rules and the weak axiom of revealed preference. Budget constraint, utility maximization problem, competitive demand, properties and computation on some examples. Differential characterization of the demand for a differentiable utility function. Expected utility theory and risk aversion.
    • Production and Firm Behavior. Production set, transformation function, production function, examples. Competitive behavior, profit maximization, profit function, supply function, properties. Differential characterization of the supply for a differentiable transformation function. Cost minimization, cost function, demand function, properties. Relationship between profit maximization and cost minimization.

    QEM1 & DU MMEF - MICROECONOMICS 1

    As for the content of the first part of this course, see Microeconomics 1A: Individual Decision Making. The content of the rest of the course Microeconomics 1 is given below.

    Equilibria & Optimality

    • Pure exchange: the Edgeworth box. Definitions of competitive equilibrium and Pareto optimality in the Edgeworth box. Computation and geometric characterization of equilibria and Pareto optima in the Edgeworth box.
    • Production economies. Private ownership economies, definition of competitive equilibrium. Basic properties: Walras’s Law and price normalization. Computation of competitive equilibria. Notions of feasible allocations and Pareto optimal allocations in a production economy. Pareto optimality conditions in terms of marginal rates of substitution and marginal rates of transformation. First and Second theorems of welfare economics.

    References

    • Mas-Colell, A., Whinston, M.D., Green, J., (MWG) Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, 1995. Chapters 1-6, 10 and 15-16.
    • Class Notes: Microeconomis 1, 2019.
    • Mathematical Appendix for Economics, 2019.

  • LEARNING RESOURCES