Microeconomic Advanced Theory
Course Syllabus Fall Semester, AY2003 Professor: Office: Telephone: Email: Course meeting time/place: Matthew J. Baker Nimitz 76 Office: 3-6890 [e-mail] MW56, MU (Morey) 116
FE 400 sec. 3322
Texts (required): Topics in Microeconomics: Industrial organization, auctions, and incentives, by Elmar Wolfstetter, and Microeconomics of Market Failures, by Bernhard Salanie. Contact and Course Information: For small matters and questions, please feel free to get in touch by email; I typically respond within several hours, and almost never go more than twelve hours without checking my email. Course materials and handouts are sometimes available from my website: http://www.usna.edu/Users/econ/mbaker. From my page, you can also access tools such as Econlit and JSTOR. Course work/Grading: Grades are comprised primarily of a project and exams. Further, I shall assign problems throughout the semester that will require some effort, although we shall generally devote some class time to them. We shall have three exams (short but intense) during the semester, and a final. I shall consider your performance in class, both in asking and answering questions pertaining to course material in your final grade; this is what is meant by "instructor discretion" below. The grade breakdown is as follows: Grade Breakdown: First exam: Second exam: Third exam: Final: Homework: Project: Instructor Discretion: 15% 15% 15% 25% 10% 10% 10%
Project description: For the project, you are to complete a comprehensive review of a branch of literature in microeconomic theory. What I have in mind is that you write an introductory chapter of a dissertation that a Ph. D. student in microeconomic theory might write. Great examples of the sort of literature review I am talking about can be found in the Journal of Economic Literature; I suggest browsing a few recent issues to get a feel for the sort of work involved, and the sort of format project your should have. More specifically, I shall find a branch of microeconomic literature, as designated by the Journal of Economic Literature's classification system, and you will write a review of recent developments in this literature.
Project tips: In my experience, the biggest difficulty students have in writing good papers is accumulating enough references. For this project, as it is essentially a literature review, you will be required to accumulate many more solid, journal-article references than any other paper you have written (30 is a good rule of thumb). The single best thing you can do is find a paper you like early on, and adopt it as a template; the match of topics is even irrelevant. Set up your paper so it looks like your model. Try to match it in terms of numbers of references and length. Follow its organizational strategy, and the arrangement of the introduction. It goes without saying that you shouldn't copy the paper's content, however! Also, keep the following in mind. When an economist writes a paper, very rarely do they read 30 to 50 references in detail. The strategy is to find two or three papers/books to read in detail, look caref...