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Microeconomic Theory

Microeconomic Theory

List Price: $105.00
Your Price: $96.56
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Big book, but much bigger in its contents
Review: In its coverage and depth, this book needs help from only several other books such as Fudenberg and Tirole's(Game), Freixas and Rochet's(Banking), Tirole's(IO) and Salanie's(Contract) in the standard topics of microeconomic theory.
In the meantime, this big book provides relatively unified and consistent core in "mathematical analysis"-like terms and tones. This may make the students frustrated and bored. Simply, this problem can be fixed in only one way. "Stand and Be accustomed!"

One thing is that we'd better get accustomed to Real Analysis, Functional Analysis, Vector Analysis and the like.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Justly used everywhere
Review: This textbook is justly being adopted by almost all gruaduate programs in economics. It contains a very modern and quite exhaustive treatment of modern microeconomic theory, including of course demand and production, game theory, general equilibrium theory, contract theory. It also have an excellent mathematical appendix. It's a tought book to study, very advanced, but while in graduate school I found it well written, and very useful. And, believe me, I am not a fan of micro theory! Overall, the only problem I have with this book is... not really the book, but rather the fact that nowadays most graduate programs ONLY deal with the theory contained in this book, disregarding instead the many many usuful results and insights that you can find, say, in another masterful classic, Deaton and Muellbauer's "Economics and consumer behavior", which unlikely Mas-Colell et al. has a stong emphasis on tools that researchers working in applied labor/public/development economics will find invaluable. Indeed, I am waiting for someone to write a more updated and modern version of a book like Deaton & Muellbauer, but apparently it has not appeared yet. Anyway, Mas-Colell is an amazingly good textbook for micro theory, and it has justly become a classic.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Better than Varian
Review: Even though this is a very large text, it's written in an easily comprehended manner. I find that reading it once is usually sufficient whereas Varian is so terse that I have to read it five times before understanding it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Best there is
Review: I have read three graduate level Microeconomic Thoery texts: Mas-Colell, et al. Microeconomic Theory, Varian's Microeconomic Analysis, and Krep's A Course in Microeconomic Theory.

Mas-Colell is generally the most detailed, inclusive book that must be on the shelf of any serious economist. It has its weak points; however, it is the best that there is for learning the basics of microeconomic theory. Note that this book is generally the text of choice for the first year of graduate study at most all of the top econ programs.

The math requirements for getting the most out of this book are fairly heavy. With out a good math for economists course, this book is very difficult to use.

Kreps book takes on more of the game theory approach. This is very interesting for the game/decision theorist, and is a highly recommended in addition to Mas-Colell for those with these interests.

Varian is often used in masters degree level graduate programs, and lower-level phd programs. At Cornell, Varian covered most of the information from the first semester of microeconomics, but provided virtually no help after that.

It is not as intense as Mas-Colell. However, it is often very helpful in its own right. For students who are using Mas-Colell in their courses, but are struggling to grasp all of the concepts, Varian presents the information in a more "user-friendly" way. He spends more time explaining the concepts using english rather than math, which can be very helpful to someone just starting out.

Additionally, I found the practice problems and examples in Varian very helpful when studying for exams.

In summary, all serious economists usually have Mas-Colell. Other than that, choose your additional books based on your needs and interests.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Solid introduction to microeconomics
Review: Just like Samuelson's introductory text was for many years a standard in undergraduate economics courses, so is MWG the canonical choice for first-year graduate microeconomics. It is a comprehensive treatment that leaves out neither the rigorous mathematics that the subject deserves nor discussions of the applications and intuition, and while the size can be intimidating, instructors generally only choose the chapters most appropriate to their own exposition. The only quibble about the book is that while it covers the 50-year-old foundations but does not go into new developments of microeconomics too much, for which I would suggest _The Structure of Economics_.


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