Course information

Title: Microeconomics 1 - Consumption, Production and Equilibrium

Lecture hours: Thursday 9:30 - 12:30 (September 27, October 11, October 18 and October 25) and Friday 9:30 - 12:30 (October 5, October 26, November 2 and November 9)

Exercise-class hours: Wednesday 9:30 - 12:00 (October 31, November 7 and November 14) and Thursday 13:30 - 16:00 (October 4, October 11, October 18, October 25 and November 15)

Location: Jourdan campus

Language: English (the exam can be written in French or in English)

Course web site: http://selod.ensae.net/m1/index.htm

Instructor

Harris Selod

Office: Bureau 48, Bâtiment B, ground floor

Phone: 01 43 13 63 65

Mail: selod[arrowbase]ens.fr

Office hours: Monday 9:30 - 11:30 am

Exercise classes

Laurent Simula

Office: Bureau C, Bâtiment B, 2nd floor

Phone: 01 43 13 62 07

Mail: simula[arrowbase]pse.ens.fr

Office hours: Thursday 4:30 - 6:30 pm

Course Objective

The objective of the course is to present the fundamental principles of microeconomic analysis and its formalization. The course will be divided in three parts. The first part of the course will focus on the behavior of consumers. After presenting the basic concepts of consumer theory (preferences and utilities, indifference curves, the marginal rate of substitution, etc.), the course will focus on the classical demand theory (Marshallian demand function, indirect utility, Roy's identity) as well as on the analysis of duality (Hicksian demand, expenditure function, Shepard's lemma, Slutsky equation). The second part of the course will then move on to the supply side of the economy. After recalling the basic concepts associated with production (technologies, isoquants, returns to scale, marginal productivity, etc.), it will detail the production theory and deepen the analysis of duality in the context of production (conditional factor demand, cost function, Hotelling's lemma). The third and last part of the course will present the concept of Pareto-optimality, the competitive equilibrium, and an introduction to the two fundamental theorems of welfare economics. The final class will be devoted to an introduction to choice under uncertainty (namely the expected utility theory).

Course Schedule and Course Notes

• September 27: Introduction, Chapter 1 - Preference and choice

• October 5, 2007: Chapter 2 - Consumer choice

• October 5, 11 and 18, 2007: Chapter 3 - The classical demand theory

• October 25 and 26, 2007: Chapter 4 - Production

• November 2, 2007: Chapter 5 - Pareto optimality, Chapter 6 - Introduction to general equilibrium

• November 9, 2007: Chapter 7 - Choice under uncertainty

Bibliographic References

Mas-Collel A., M. Whinston and J. Green (1995), Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, 981 pages. This is the core textbook for this course which draws extensively from it.

Chiang A. and K. Wainwright (2005), Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics, McGraw Hill Education, 800 pages.

Simon S. and L. Blume (1994), Mathematics for Economists, W.W. Norton & Company, 954 pages.

Varian H. (1992), Microeconomic Analysis, W.W. Norton & Company (translation: Varian H. (1995), Analyse microéconomique, De Boeck Université, 509 pages).

Exercises

All exercises, corrections and related materials can be downloaded directly from Laurent Simula's web site. Execrices can de donwloaded by clicking on the links below:

• October 4, 2007: Problem set 1

• October 11, 2007: Problem set 2

• October 18, 2007: Problem set 3

• October 25, 2007: Problem set 4

• October 31, 2007: Problem set 5

• November 7, 2007: Problem set 6

• November 15, 2007: Problem set 7

• November 16, 2006: Problem set 8

Examination

The written exam will be on Saturday, December 1, 2007 (10:00-12:00, Room A2). No documents allowed. It will be possible to write the exam either in French or in English.

• 2006-2007 exam

• 2006-2007 catch-up exam

Links

Harris Selod's homepage

Laurent Simula's web site

Last update: November 21, 2007