These notes are the result of an interrupted sequence of seminars on optimiza tion theory with economic applications starting in 1964-1965. This is mentioned by way of explaining the uneven style that pervades them. Lately I have been using the notes for a two semester course on the subject for graduate students in economics. Except for the introductory survey, the notes are intended to provide an appetizer to more sophisticated aspects of optimization theory and economic theory. The notes are divided into three parts. Part I collects most of the results on constrained extremf! of differentiable functionals on finite and not so finite dimensional spaces. It is to be used as a reference and as a place to find credits to various authors whose ideas we report. Part II is concerned with finite dimensional problems and is written in detail. Needless to say, my contributions are marginal. The economic examples are well known and are presented by way of illustrating the theory. Part III is devoted to variational problems leading to a discussion of some optimal control problems. There is a vast amount of literature on these problems and I tried to limit my intrusions to explaining some of the obvious steps that are usually left out. I have borrowed heavily from Akhiezer [ 1], Berkovitz [ 7], Bliss [lOJ and Pars [40J. The economic applications represent some of my work and are presented in the spirit of illustration.

This systematic exposition and survey of mathematical economics emphasizes the unifying structures of economic theory.

The disjunctive cut principle of Balas and Jeroslow, and the related polyhedral annexation principle of Glover, provide new insights into cutting plane theory. This has resulted in its ability to not only subsume many known valid cuts but also improve upon them. Originally a set of notes were written for the purpose of putting together in a common terminology and framework significant results of Glover and others using a geometric approach, referred to in the literature as convexity cuts, and the algebraic approach of Balas and Jeroslow known as Disjunctive cuts. As it turned out subsequently the polyhedral annexation approach of Glover is also closely connected with the basic disjunctive principle of Balas and Jeroslow. In this monograph we have included these results and have also added several published results which seem to be of strong interest to researchers in the area of developing strong cuts for disjunctive programs. In particular, several results due to Balas [4,5,6,7], Glover [18,19] and Jeroslow [23,25,26] have been used in this monograph. The appropriate theorems are given without proof. The notes also include several results yet to be published [32,34,35] obtained under a research contract with the National Science Foundation to investigate solution methods for disjunctive programs. The monograph is self-contained and complete in the sense that it attempts to pool together existing results which the authors viewed as important to future research on optimization using the disjunctive cut approach.

An accessible introduction to the analytical foundation of economics

This textbook is designed as a guide for students of mathematical economics, with the aim of providing them with a firm foundation for further studies in economics. A substantial portion of the mathematical tools required for the study of microeconomics at the graduate level is covered, in addition to the standard elements of microeconomics and various applications. Theorems and definitions are clearly explained with numerous exercises to complement the text and to help the student better understand and master the principles of mathematical economics.

This textbook is designed as a guide for students of mathematical economics, with the aim of providing them with a firm foundation for further studies in economics. A substantial portion of the mathematical tools required for the study of microeconomics at the graduate level is covered, in addition to the standard elements of microeconomics and various applications. Theorems and definitions are clearly explained with numerous exercises to complement the text and to help the student better understand and master the principles of mathematical economics.

It is not an exaggeration to state that most problems dealt with in economic theory can be formulated as problems in optimization theory. This holds true for the paradigm of "behavioral" optimization in the pursuit of individual self interests and societally efficient resource allocation, as well as for equilibrium paradigms where existence and stability problems in dynamics can often be stated as "potential" problems in optimization. For this reason, books in mathematical economics and in mathematics for economists devote considerable attention to optimization theory. However, with very few exceptions, the reader who is interested in further study is left with the impression that there is no further place to go to and that what is in these second hand sources is all these is available as far as the subject of optimization theory is concerned. On the other hand the main results from mathematics are often carelessly stated or, more often than not, they do not get to be formally stated at all. Furthermore, it should be well understood that economic theory in general and, mathematical economics in particular, must be classified as special types of applied mathematics or, more precisely, of motivated mathematics since tools of mathematical analysis are used to prove theorems in an economics context in the manner in which probability theory may be classified. Hence, rigor and correct scholarship are of utmost importance and can not be subject to compromise.

Semi-infinite programming is a natural extension of linear pro gramming that allows finitely many variables to appear in infinitely many constraints. As the papers in this collection will reconfirm, the theoretical and practical manifestations and applications of this prob lem formulation are abundant and significant. This volume presents 20 carefully selected papers that were pre sented at the International Symposium on Semi-Infinite Programming and Applications, The University of Texas at Austin, September 8-10, 1981. A total of 70 papers were presented by distinguished participants from 15 countries. This was only the second international meeting on this topic, the first taking place in Bad Honnef,Federal Republic of Germany in 1978. A proceedings of that conference was organized and edited by Rainer Hettich of the University of Trier and published by Springer Verlag in 1979. The papers in this volume could have been published in any of several refereed journals. It is also probable that the authors of these papers would normally not have met at the same professional society meeting. Having these papers appear under one cover is thus something of a new phenomenon and provides an indication of both the unification and cross-fertilization opportunities that have emerged in this field. These papers were solicited only through the collective efforts of an International Program Committee organized according to the fol lowing research areas.

The book contains reproductions of the most important papers that gave birth to the first developments in nonlinear programming. Of particular interest is W. Karush's often quoted Master Thesis, which is published for the first time. The anthology includes an extensive preliminary chapter, where the editors trace out the history of mathematical programming, with special reference to linear and nonlinear programming.​

He consider a cone dominance problem: given a "preference" cone lP and a set n X ~ R of available, or feasible, alternatives, the problem is to identify the non dominated elements of X. The nonzero elements of lP are assumed to model the do- nance structure of the problem so that y s X dominates x s X if Y = x + P for some nonzero p S lP. Consequently, x S X is nondominated if, and only if, ({x} + lP) n X = {x} (1.1) He will also refer to nondominated points as efficient points (in X with respect to lP) and we will let EF(XJP) denote the set of such efficient points. This cone dominance problem draws its roots from two separate, but related, ori gins. The first of these is multi-attribute decision making in which the elements of the set X are endowed with various attributes, each to be maximized or minimized.