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, intended for second-year Ph.D. students. (Economics
703, the first half of the sequence, is taught by Professor Peter Cramton in
the fall semester.) The course material varies from year to year, but
currently it focuses on auction theory, matching theory, and the
relationship between matching theory and auction 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. Two new topics that may be included in Spring 2010
are: design of proxy bidders for multi-unit auctions; and common-value
auctions with liquidity-constrained bidders. Depending on student
demand, I am also contemplating spending the last 1 to 2 weeks on models
that relax common-knowledge assumptions and are thereby able to reach
interesting conclusions on no-trade theorems, asset bubbles, and trading
collapses. Other topics that have been treated in some years include:
sequential bargaining under incomplete information; and equilibrium
refinements.
