Advanced Microeconomics

Part 1: Consumer and production theory
1.1 Consumer theory: Classical demand theory (budget constraint, preferences, utility, consumption demand, indirect utility, expenditure function, welfare evaluation, equivalent and compensating variation, axioms of revealed preferences).
1.2 Production theory: Production sets. Profit maximization and cost minimization. The geometry of costs.

Part 2: Choice under uncertainty
2.1 Theory: Lotteries. Preferences over lotteries. Expected Utility Theory (EUT). Money lotteries and risk aversion. Comparison of payoff distributions in terms of returns and risk. Subjective probabilities. Some criticisms to EUT.
2.2 Applications: insurance and portfolio choice.

Part 3: Aggregation
3.1 Demand aggregation.
3.2 Supply aggregation.
3.3 On the existence of a "representative agent".

Part 4: General competitive equilibrium and its welfare properties
4.1 Simple economies: the Edgworth box, 1 producer \& 1 consumer economy, 2X2 economy.
4.2 Pareto optimality and social welfare optima: feasibility, Pareto optimal problem, welfare function, Pareto frontier.

Part 5: Possible additional topics
5.1 The positive theory of equilibrium Existence, uniqueness.
5.2 Competitive equilibrium under uncertainty: Markets for contingent commodities. Arrow-Debreu equilibrium. Markets for assets and insurance policies. Back to welfare properties of competitive equilibria. Sequential trade and incomplete markets.
5.3 Basic principles of financial economics: The fundamental theorem of asset pricing. Mean-variance analysis.

Matematica generale. Si consiglia inoltre di aver sostenuto un secondo corso di matematica che abbia trattato elementi di analisi e di ottimizzazione statica (libera e vincolata), come Mathematical Methods for Economics.

A. Mas-Colell, M.D. Whinston and J.R. Green, Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, 1995
H. Varian, Microeconomic Analysis, WW Norton and co. New York, III edition.

Lezioni frontali

Tre lezioni settimanali durante il semestre accademico

Esame finale in aula (senza l'ausilio di appunti e manuali)

Part 1: Consumer and production theory
1.1 Consumer theory: Classical demand theory (budget constraint, preferences, utility, consumption demand, indirect utility, expenditure function, welfare evaluation, equivalent and compensating variation, axioms of revealed preferences).
1.2 Production theory: Production sets. Profit maximization and cost minimization. The geometry of costs.

Part 2: Choice under uncertainty
2.1 Theory: Lotteries. Preferences over lotteries. Expected Utility Theory (EUT). Money lotteries and risk aversion. Comparison of payoff distributions in terms of returns and risk. Subjective probabilities. Some criticisms to EUT.
2.2 Applications: insurance and portfolio choice.

Part 3: Aggregation
3.1 Demand aggregation.
3.2 Supply aggregation.
3.3 On the existence of a "representative agent".

Part 4: General competitive equilibrium and its welfare properties
4.1 Simple economies: the Edgworth box, 1 producer \& 1 consumer economy, 2X2 economy.
4.2 Pareto optimality and social welfare optima: feasibility, Pareto optimal problem, welfare function, Pareto frontier.

Part 5: Possible additional topics
5.1 The positive theory of equilibrium Existence, uniqueness.
5.2 Competitive equilibrium under uncertainty: Markets for contingent commodities. Arrow-Debreu equilibrium. Markets for assets and insurance policies. Back to welfare properties of competitive equilibria. Sequential trade and incomplete markets.
5.3 Basic principles of financial economics: The fundamental theorem of asset pricing. Mean-variance analysis.

Matematica generale. Si consiglia inoltre di aver sostenuto un secondo corso di matematica che abbia trattato elementi di analisi e di ottimizzazione statica (libera e vincolata), come Mathematical Methods for Economics.

A. Mas-Colell, M.D. Whinston and J.R. Green, Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press, 1995
H. Varian, Microeconomic Analysis, WW Norton and co. New York, III edition.

Lezioni frontali

Tre lezioni settimanali durante il semestre accademico

Esame finale in aula (senza l'ausilio di appunti e manuali)