Modern Price Theory [antikvár]

PREFACE This book is intended for a course in intermediate or MBA microeconomics, or price theory. Modem Price Theory brings modem topics—such as the economics of information, Nash equilibrium, and even a simple treatment of Shepherd's lemma—into its discussions of traditional areas of study. No knowledge of calculus is assumed, but some footnotes explain concepts with the use of elementary calculus. The student is expected to be able to solve problems in algebra. Economics is both rigorous and practical. This book attempts to steer a course between a completely formal treatment that suggests that economics is abstract and sterile and a completely informal, intuitive approach that suggests that economics is not a rigorous, logical subject. As John Maynard Keynes commented, The study of economics does not seem to require any specialized gifts of an unusually high order. Is it not, intellectually regarded, a very easy subject compared with the higher branches of philosophy and pure science? Yet good, or even competent, economists are the rarest of birds. An easy subject, at which very few excel! The paradox finds its explanation, perhaps, in that the master-economist must possess a rare combination of gifts. He must be mathematician, historian, statesman, philosopher—in some degree. He must understand symbols and speak in words. He must contemplate the particular in terms of the general, and touch abstract and concrete in the same flight of thought. He must study the present in the light of the past for the purposes of the future. No part of man's nature or his institutions must lie entirely outside his regard. He must be purposeful and disinterested in a simultaneous mood; as aloof and incorruptible as an artist, yet sometimes as near the earth as a politician.