Online Text and Notes in Intermediate Microeconomics
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Prize lectures from economics Nobel Laureates
The Nobel Foundation makes available a great deal of material on each of the Economics prize winners, including video of each Prize Lecture since Robert Mundell in 1999. As well as a lay introduction to each prize winner's research, there are "Advanced information" links giving a more technical explanation. This link is to the Economics Network's quick index of lecture videos and related materials on the site. Each video is a full lecture (usually between 40 and 60 minutes) with good audio and video quality, and pitched at a non-technical audience. Transcripts of each lecture are available in PDF form.
LSE teaching materials on Income Tax
This complete set of materials for teaching income tax has been used in a second year undergraduate microeconomics course for economics specialists at the London School of Economics. The material could also be used in a public finance course. There are 107 Powerpoint slides, a worked example to support the lecture, a class activity involving student presentations (printable instructions for students and for lecturers) and some assessment questions.
Prices and markets
This course webpage for Prices and Markets, as taught at Strathclyde University includes sets of lecture slides for the 2003/4 course in PDF, as well as problem sets (short answer and True/False) with answers in a separate file. There are also some sample questions from past exams.
Creating spreadsheets for use in teaching: examples
Ten Excel spreadsheets, each with a worksheet in Microsoft Word format, are held here. Each spreadsheet takes several different inputs from the student and the worksheets give specific guidance on how to use them. Topics are: Working with Lines, Market Equilibrium, Market with tax, Cardinal Utility, Consumer Choice, Income and Substitution Effects, Products and Costs, Competitive Firm, Competitive Industry, and Monopoly.
Year 2 - microeconomics
This is an almost complete, detailed intermediate micro textbook. The book is arranged into four parts: "Economies without Production", "Economies with Production", "Applications and Implications of the Basic Tools" and "Market Inefficiencies of Various Types". There are also lecture notes with graphs to accompany most chapters, generated in Maple and converted to HTML.
Economics for students of mathematics
Brief lecture notes and problem sets in Word format are archived here from a 2003/4 course - it also includes a past exam paper, syllabus and solutions for problem sets. All the materials are from an Economics for students of mathematics course as taught by Simon Palmer of the University of Southampton.
Industrial Economics lectures
Lecture notes on theory of the firm, growth of firms and industry concentration, barriers to entry, product differentiation, welfare effects of monopoly and other industrial topics. Some handwritten; most contain graphical presentation as well as algebra, some accompanied by slides. Linked to 10-week Industrial Economics course at City University, as taught in 2005.
Decision Theory under uncertainty
Decision Theory under uncertainty is a PowerPoint presentation from Marcus Vera-Hernandez of University College London. It is a straightforward depiction of decision-making under risk, showing how risk attitudes can be examined using choices among lotteries or willingness to pay for insurances. Shows how risk attitudes can be captured in convexity of the indifference curve or strict concavity of the utility function; and how risk aversion can be quantified by the ratio of second and first derivatives of the utility function, implying that it falls as wealth increases.
Microeconomics for public policy
Microeconomics for Public Policy is a course webpage from Marcos Vera-Hernandez at UCL as taught in 2008. It contains 100+ lecture slides covering the demand and supply sides of partial equilibrium analysis, including effects of shifts in demand and supply, price elasticities of demand and supply, short- and long-run changes, efficiency and welfare analysis, impact of taxes and price controls, extension to international trade. Uses clear graphics and simple equations. Also includes a course syllabus, coursework assignments and a sample exam paper.
Lecture notes in microeconomic theory : the economic agent
Lecture notes in microeconomic theory: the economic agent is an online text produced by Arial Rubinstein of Tel Aviv University / New York University. It covers advanced topics in microeconomic theory including consumer preferences, expected utility, risk aversion and social choice. The text is presented as a series of PDF chapters, with notes, mathematical proofs, bibliographical notes and problem sets.
Microeconomics with calculus
Created to accompany an intermediate microeconomics course, these PDF files include text, equations and graphs, with hyperlinks to help the reader navigate around each of the 13 tutorials. The files also include interactive multiple-choice quizzes. Topics covered include Decisions and Markets, Pricing and Equilibrium and Tradeoffs and Choice. This link is to Archive.org's copy of the site, dating from November 2005.
The time value of money
This PowerPoint presentation introduces the concept of Time Value of Money and illustrates the use of a calculator to make time value calculations. It concludes with a set of problems to which answers are provided.
Intermediate microeconomics: tutorials
Twelve tutorials on microeconomic topics are available on this course web site, each divided into short chunks and with graphics and Excel worksheets. The topics are: Reservation Prices, Supply and Demand, Price Elasticity, Consumer Choice, Consumer Demand, Production, Costs, Price-taking Firms, Monopolistic Firms, Wage-taking Firms, and Monopsonistic Firms.
Microeconomic theory: lecture notes and exams
This is a course web site from 1999, with links to sites for previous years. It includes problems sets, suggested readings and past exams papers. Topics addressed are: Axiomatic development of utility functions, Axiomatic development of expected utility, Applying expected utility theory, Introduction to Revealed Preference, Consumer Theory Handout, Consumer Theory: Summing Up, and Applied Consumer Theory. All material is in PDF.
Microeconomics 2: Economics and organisations
This is the support site for a Microeconomics 2 course and has PDF lecture notes and PowerPoint animated slide shows for the following topics: Game Theory, Firms and Markets, Principal Agent Analysis, Production, Costs, Competition and Monopoly, Monopoly Pricing, Cournot Oligopoly, Stackelberg and Bertrand, Cournot with Conjectural Variations, and Price Leadership.
The economics of competition : a global perspective
The economics of competition: a global perspective, is part of Kevin Hinde's suite of economics resources. The lecture slide shows are from a course for Business Studies students which "explores the effects of competitive and anti-competitive behaviour in Europe". Lecture topics are: Introduction to Competition and Regulation, Case Study on Regulation: Protecting Consumers, Understanding Markets and Industries, The Welfare Effects of Market Structure, Oligopoly, Barriers to Entry, Cartels, Predatory Behaviour, and Privatisation and Regulation of Public Utilities. They are available in PDF and also as PowerPoint files.
Price theory : an intermediate text
This is the complete text (24 chapters) of an intermediate microeconomics textbook, with many graphics. The first edition was published in 1986, with additional chapters added in 1990. Main sections include "Competitive Equilibrium in a Simple Economy", "Complications, or Onward to Reality", "Judging Outcomes" and "Applications, Conventional and Un-". Each chapter includes questions at the end.
A theory of choice
This link takes you directly to a PDF file of a Robert Marks chapter on demand. It covers a "theory of market demand from a small number of axioms of rational choice", including a theory of rational choice, utility bundles and indifference curves, constrained maximisation of utility, the Edgeworth Box, individual demand function, comparative statics, including the Slutsky equation and the market demand curve and relevant elasticities.
Microeconomic analysis
A dozen sets of bullet-point lecture slides from an MBA course in microeconomic analysis, with some past exercises. Topics are: Creating Value, Added Value in Trade, Monopolistic Markets, Costs of Production to Mass Markets, Pricing to Mass Markets, Pricing with Multiple Buyers and Sellers, Production in Perfectly Competitive Markets, Barriers to Entry and Competition, Game Theory Revisited, Oligopoly, and Review and Extensions to Business Strategy.
Robinson Crusoe meets Walras and Keynes
This is a large (half-megabyte) PDF file, scanned from 21 pages of typewritten lecture notes, in which Nobel laureate McFadden tells a witty alternative tale of Robinson Crusoe. Walras and Keynes appear on his island to offer advice on the maximisation of happiness and his employment of Man Friday. Indifference curves, production possibility curves and profit maximisation are among the topics addressed.
Quantum microeconomics with calculus
This is a 234-page textbook written by a graduate student. It is available as a single 1Meg PDF file. A separate version with far less maths is also available. The text is in four sections: "One: The Optimising Individual", "One v. One, One v. Many", "Many v. Many" and "The Role of Government".
Intermediate microeconomic theory
This course webpage supports Intermediate Microeconomic Theory as taught by Sergei Izmalkov of MIT in 2006. Follow the download this course link for a zip file that contains this 22-lecture course. It is divided into "Producer Part," "Consumer Part," "Equilibrium Analysis," "Strategic Considerations" (including asymmetric information) and "Special Topics". Some brief lecture notes for each are archived in PDF.
[Intermediate microeconomics lecture notes]
This 134-page PDF file contains notes for slides for the whole of the fifth edition of Varian's textbook on intermediate microeconomics.
Economics with calculus
Four sample chapters from this text for mathematically adept students are available for download. The chapters are "Introduction", "Supply and Demand", "The Business Enterprise: Theory of the Firm" and "Growth and Development". More than 150 pages of material are included, plus the book's preface and contents.
Introduction to economic analysis
This is a complete textbook covering intermediate microeconomics, released online under a Creative Commons license and downloadable as a 352-page PDF file. Chapter titles are "What is Economics?" "Supply and Demand", "The US Economy", "Producer Theory", "Consumer Theory", "Market Imperfections" and "Strategic Behaviour". This text contains a number of topics and case studies not covered in other texts, for details of which see the home page.
Network economics
Network Economics is an introductory text by Anna Nagurney of the Isenberg School of Management, University of Massachusetts. It includes notes and reading list on economics of networks, mostly as text and basic diagrams. Includes cost and distance optimisation problems, congestion (including Braess's Paradox) and applications of networks to economics.
Post-Autistic Economics Review
Critical articles on mainstream (neoclassical) economics, and alternatives, including ideas on how to revive and teach disappearing heterodox traditions [eg Post-Keynesianism, Austrian Economics, Marxism, Neo-Ricardianism, Old Institutionalism]. Articles are all non-technically presented, many by prominent economists within and outside the neoclassical tradition. Also background information and news on the 'Post-Autistic Economics Network' and its quest to preserve a non-mainstream curriculum.
An introduction to investment theory
An Introduction to Investment Theory is an online textbook "designed for use in a four-week teaching module for master's students studying introductory finance", written by William N. Goetzmann of Yale University, School of Management. Eight chapters covering theories of financial investment decision, risk, portfolio selection, asset pricing, arbitrage, capital market efficiency. Assumes some basic statistical knowledge, but presentation mostly uses diagrams and simple algebra.
Institutional economics
Institutional Economics site containing links to course outlines for 30+ institutional, behavioural and heterodox economics courses, mostly in the US. Online access to Allan Schmid's working papers, and book 'Property, Power and Public Choice' (in English and Spanish). This argues the general case for countries' economic performance being affected the institutions that shape agents' choices and governments' policymaking, then sets out (and offers some secondary empirical support for) some hypotheses on the impact of different property rights arrangements.
Behavioral economics : past, present, future
Behavioral Economics is a draft of the opening chapter of C Camerer, G Loewenstein and M Rabin (eds)(2003) Advances in Behavioral Economics, Princeton University Press. It covers the main heuristics and judgement biases revealed by psychological experiments and statistical surveys on choice, and the implications for macroeconomics, financial economics, labour economics and other areas where 'rational' choice is traditionally assumes.
Neoclassical theories of production
Neoclassical Theories of Production is a detailed summary of orthodox models of the supply-side economics, covering production functions, marginal-productivity theory of distribution, profit-maximising conditions, the firm in partial and general equilibrium, imperfect competition. Presents more recent developments in the theory (e.g. constant elasticity of substitution production function, bordered Hessian matrix fort quasi-concavity, activity analysis, new institutionalism) while keeping to simple mathematical and graphic presentation.
History of economic thought website
Impressive, very large site on history of economic thought, including a long alphabetical list of historical economists with profiles and further links to original documents on the same server. You can also browse by school of thought - Pre-Classical, Anglo-American, Heterodox Themes, Classical, Continental, and Keynesian. You can examine the same material by theme: there are impressive documents in the categories of Business Cycle Theory, Empirics and Econometrics, Imperfect Competition, Economic Development, Uncertainty and Information, Game Theory and Finance Theory and includes weblinks and references. It is hosted at the graduate faculty of economics of the New School University New York
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This page was last updated Tue Mar 30 14:32:47 BST 2010