Syllabus academic year 2008/2009
(Created 2008-07-17.)
MICROECONOMIC THEORYTEK135

Higher education credits: 10,5. Grading scale: TH. Level: G2 (First level). Language of instruction: The course will be given in Swedish. TEK135 overlap following cours/es: NEK601, TEK120, NEKB21 och TEK120. Compulsory for: Pi3fm. Optional for: I3fi, Pi3. Course coordinator: Professor Fredrik Andersson, fredrik.andersson@nek.lu.se, Nationalekonomiska inst. Prerequisites: Microeconomic for Technicians (VFT120, TEK115 or TEK116). The course might be cancelled if the numer of applicants is less than 25. Assessment: The examination consists of a written exam at the end of the course and exercises during the course. The exercises are voluntary but are credited with points. Home page: http://www.nek.lu.se/.

Aim
The aim of the course is to give the students an understanding of modern microeconomic theory, consisting of the theory of consumtion and production, the theory of oligopoly and its game theoretic foundations and parts of the theory of financial markets.

Knowledge and understanding
For a passing grade the student must

Skills and abilities
For a passing grade the student must

Judgement and approach
For a passing grade the student must

Contents
The course starts with the basis of the theory of individual choice; choice under uncertainty is treated separately. After analyzing general equilibrium in an economy, the course also provides an application on financial and insurance problems. Firms and technologies are modelled. The dual approach to production theory is defined and applied to efficiency analysis of economic units. Game theoretic solution methods are defined and used to analyse firmsÂ’ strategic quantity and price setting problems on markets with a small number of agents. The course also contains an introduction to financial economics; among other things the theory of portfolio choice and equilibrium pricing of financial assets are discussed along with arbitrage free pricing of derivatives.

Literature
Varian, H.R. (2005) Intermediate Microeconomics, W.W. Norton & Company.
Lecture notes.