MICROECONOMICS 2018/2019

Topics:

Preferences and consumers’ choice: budget constraint, utility function, indifference curves; utility maximization and individual demand functions; income effect and substitution effect; optimal choice with income expressed in form of good endowments; leisure-labor choice; Intertemporal choice: the discounted utility model. Choice under uncertainty: the expected utility model; attitude towards risk.

The firm and technology: production function, marginal and average product; isoquants and isocosts; returns to scale; revenue curves, cost curves in short and long run: profit maximization, cost minimization.

Market structure: perfect competition, monopoly and oligopoly (Bertrand, Cournot and Stackelberg). Introduction to game theory: simultaneous and sequential games, dominant strategies, Nash equilibrium, subgame-perfect Nash equilibrium.

Textbook: A. Goolsbee, S. Levitt, C. Syverson, "Microeconomics", Worth Publishers (Macmillan learning)
General equilibrium: Edgeworth box and Pareto efficiency under different
market structures, first and second welfare theorems.

Market failures, asymmetric information, externalities and public goods

Teacher: Luigi Marengo