Ariel Rubinstein's well-known lecture notes on microeconomics—now fully revised and expanded This book presents Ariel Rubinstein's lecture notes for the first part of his well-known graduate course in microeconomics. Developed during the fifteen years that Rubinstein taught the course at Tel Aviv University, Princeton University, and New York University, these notes provide a critical assessment of models of rational economic agents, and are an invaluable supplement to any primary textbook in microeconomic theory. In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Rubinstein retains the striking originality and deep simplicity that characterize his famously engaging style of teaching. He presents these lecture notes with a precision that gets to the core of the material, and he places special emphasis on the interpretation of key concepts. Rubinstein brings this concise book thoroughly up to date, covering topics like modern choice theory and including dozens of original new problems. Written by one of the world's most respected and provocative economic theorists, this second edition of Lecture Notes in Microeconomic Theory is essential reading for students, teachers, and research economists. Fully revised, expanded, and updated Retains the engaging style and method of Rubinstein's well-known lectures Covers topics like modern choice theory Features numerous original new problems—including 21 new review problems Solutions manual (available only to teachers) can be found at: http://gametheory.tau.ac.il/microTheory/.

This book deals with microeconomic theory as it concerns general economic equilibrium and the implications for prices and resource allocation. Students with a background in mathematics will find in this volume a broad, comprehensible overview of the ideas which have contributed to our understanding of general equilibrium.

People pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, while others have interests that are broad and altruistic. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.Following some foundational remarks, this book studies the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. That theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set. The book then studies numerous refinements, generalizations and extensions of each of these restrictions — up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice and choice behaviour when preferences are intransitive/incomplete/discontinuous. Also considered is choice behaviour in environments that are not necessarily compact. A study is also made of intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty. The study of Arrow-Debreu choice theory and its extensions are presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Beginning with a study of the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, the book considers extensions and generalizations of this framework, particularly to non-convex environments. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here help inform answers of the second question posed above.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12789-sm

In this book, John P. Burkett presents microeconomics as an evolving science, interacting with mathematics, psychology, and other disciplines and offering solutions to a growing range of practical problems. The book shows how early contributors such as Xenophon, Ibn Khaldun, and David Hume posed the normative and positive questions central to microeconomics. It expounds constrained optimization techniques, as developed by economists and mathematicians from Daniel Bernoulli to Leonid Kantorovich, emphasizing their value in deriving norms of rational behavior and testable hypotheses about typical behavior. Applying these techniques, the book introduces partial equilibrium analysis of particular markets and general equilibrium analysis of market economies. The book both explains how laboratory and field experiments are used in testing economic hypotheses and provides materials for classroom experiments. It gives extensive and innovative coverage of recent findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, which not only document behavior inconsistent with some traditional theories, but also advance positive theories with superior predictive power.

New opportunities in the global workplace have heightened interest in business studies. In response to this trend, this book presents an in-depth analysis of a corpus of authentic business studies lectures, focusing on spoken, academic, disciplinary and professional features (e.g., speech rate, interactive devices, specialized lexis) that are crucial to comprehension, but often problematic for non-native speakers. The investigation adopts an original multi-pronged approach including quantitative, qualitative and comparative analyses. It utilizes techniques drawn mainly from corpus linguistics and discourse analysis, but also integrates observational and ethnographic methods to provide unique extra-linguistic insights. The study is thus a full-circle interpretive account of this dynamic spoken genre where academia and profession converge. The book shows how business studies lectures are characterised by a synergy of discourses and communicative channels that reflect the community of practice, highlighting the need to help international business students develop multiple literacies to overcome present and future challenges.

This lecture notes provides an overview of budgeting and financial management in the public and non-profit sectors. Fundamental concepts and practices of budgeting, financial management and public finance are introduced, with special emphasis on state and local government budgeting and financial management in the United States. The objectives of courses in Public Budgeting and this title are to teach the basic concepts and nomenclature of public finance, to develop an understanding of budget processes as well as the sources and uses of public revenues, and to make relatively simple, but useful computations in an intelligent way. Key course learning outcomes include the abilities to: There are no indispensable pre-requisites by the reader, and it has been designed for students from a wide variety of backgrounds and undergraduate majors. Although this works well as an introductory text to a broader public administration curriculum, it also can make sense for students to take after some more basic courses in economics, policy analysis, and public organizations. Issues of tax incidence and the effect of taxes on economic efficiency can be covered in greater depth.

The conventional macroeconomic theory of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, based on the assumption that the working of complex monetary economy could be analysed on the same principles as those of barter exchange, has demonstrably failed. This book provides a thorough rethinking of the nature of a monetary economy. It builds upon a complete theory of the domestic and international monetary macro-economy, and of macroeconomic policy for the modern age. Central to the analysis is the idea that a successful market economy requires an endogenous supply of money via the banking system. Therefore to achieve macroeconomic stability, the book proposes the targeting of real interest rates under a regime of flexible exchange rates or 'fixed but adjustable exchange rates' as the main goal of monetary policy, along with a range of innovative fiscal and trade policies to promote economic growth, and thereby achieve full employment and a fair distribution of income.

That mistakes are made is clear. What is meant by that is not. Measuring whatever might be meant and scientifically studying it is therefore even more challenging.These lectures introduce an interdisciplinary science of mistakes to cut the Gordian knot. The key building blocks are model constructs drawn from the economic tradition, methods of measurement drawn from the psychometric tradition, and analytic methods drawn from economic theory.

A nontechnical, concise, and rigorous introduction to the rational choice paradigm, focusing on basic insights applicable in fields ranging from economics to philosophy.