Economics 603 is the first half of the Economics Department’s two-semester
core sequence in
Microeconomics. This course is taken by all first-year Economics Ph.D.
students, as well as by quite a few Ph.D. students in Agricultural &
Resource Economics, the Smith School
of Business, and other academic departments. The first half of the
semester treats consumer theory and the theory of the firm. The second
half of the semester is an introduction to game theory and its applications in
economics.
Economics 704 is the second half of
the Economics Department’s
two-semester sequence in Advanced Microeconomics. (Economics 703, the
first half of the sequence, is taught by Professor Peter Cramton in the fall
semester.) It is intended primarily for
second-year Ph.D. students in Economics, the Business School, AREC, Computer
Science and other related departments; and it regularly leads students into
dissertation research. The course material varies from year to year, but in
recent years, it has concentrated on the growing field of market design. As such, in
Spring 2012, the course will focus on auction theory, matching theory, and
the relationship between auction theory and matching theory. The auction
theory component particularly focuses on the study of multi-unit auctions,
including clock auctions and combinatorial auctions. The matching theory
component contains treatments of one-to-one and many-to-one matching,
including applications to the medical intern match, school choice, and
kidney exchange. A special emphasis of this year’s
class is the theory and practice of the combinatorial clock auction, the new
auction format that is being used for spectrum auctions in the UK,
Australia, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands. Another topic likely to
receive special attention is common-value
auctions with budget-constrained or liquidity-constrained bidders. Other
areas that have been covered in Economics 704 in
past years
have included: sequential bargaining under incomplete information; and equilibrium
refinements.
