Microeconomics

The Advanced Graduate Workshop in Development, led by Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz is interested in identifying the complex interactions that influence well-being, development and growth.

Mass protests challenging the government to focus on job-creation rather than on market liberalization and trade deals may carry a cautionary message to Western policy makers, too.

Capitalism will destroy itself, the former Greek finance minister warns, if economic calculation excludes human needs and ignores democratic verdicts

The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s report analyzes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and examines the widespread global implications in the event of its passage.

Join us for a reception at the ASSA conference in San Francisco

There is a deeper story to be told about the inclusion of the Renminbi.

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

By integrating the history of industrial development in Britain and the United States with the ideas of leading economic thinkers, this essay demonstrates the absurdity of perfect competition as the ideal of economic efficiency.

A new online course challenges typical teaching approaches.

Do we need to rethink the teaching of economics?

Hot on the heels of the BIS, now comes the IMF Global Financial Stability report, “Corporate Leverage in Emerging Markets–A Concern?”. Yes, a concern, and just in time for the annual meeting in Peru next week.

A student of microeconomics learns that any competitive equilibrium leads to a Pareto efficient outcome (First Fundamental Theorem of Welfare Economics). What do we mean by the efficiency or inefficiency of markets?

A student of microeconomics learns that any desirable efficient market allocation can be sustained by a competitive equilibrium (the Second Theorem of Welfare Economics), given appropriate lump-sum wealth redistributions. This is typically understood as a means to correct unfair market outcomes. What are the real world implications of the second theorem? How well does it address distributional concerns?

We consider nonparametric identification and estimation of pricing kernels, or equivalently of marginal utility functions up to scale, in consumption based asset pricing Euler equations. Ours is the first paper to prove nonparametric identification of Euler equations under low level conditions (without imposing functional restrictions or just assuming completeness).

Have economists fallen in love with an idealized vision of an economy in which rational individuals interact in perfect markets? To what extent is standard microeconomics responsible for this state of affairs?