Course coordinator: Anette Boom, Department of Economics (MSC)

Faculty

Head of Department Alexander Christopher Sebald (ACS)
Department of Economics, CBS

Associate Professor Karol Szwagrzak (KS)
Department of Economics, CBS

Assistant Professor Tróndur Møller Sandoy (TMS)
University of the Faroe Islands, Faculty of History and Social Sciences

Associate Professor Anette Boom (AB)
Department of Economics, CBS


Prerequisite

The course is compulsory for the PhD students of Copenhagen Business School’s Department of Economics, but also open to other PhD students with knowledge of intermediate microeconomics, some econometrics, as well as mathematical tools like multivariate calculus, constrained maximization, and linear algebra, and basic probability and statistics.

Duration

The Course starts on September 17, 2024, in week 38 with an introduction and two sessions (September 25, and 26, and October 2, and 5) in week 39 and week 40. It then continues from week 46 until week 49 (see the details in the attached lecturing plan).

Aim of the Course and Learning Objectives

After the course, students shall be able to:

• • understand the role of economic theory in cutting-edge research across all fields of economics,
  • demonstrate knowledge of the concepts, models, methods and tools of advanced microeconomic theory as discussed during the course,
  • read and understand international research papers expanding the frontier of microeconomic research,
  • apply, adapt, and develop advanced microeconomic models to specific research questions,
  • and evaluate microeconomic models used by other scholars.
    
    

Course content

The aim of the course is to get the students acquainted with the most important models and methods used in advanced microeconomic theory in order to enable them to apply these models and methods later in their own research. This is done by introducing the students to either very influential and/or recent academic research.

The course covers the following topics:

1. Decisions Theory (Revealed preferences, Uncertainty, Risk, and Time preferences)
2. Game Theory,
3. Mechanism Design and Contract Theory.

Lectures and student workshops.

Assessment

Attendance is obligatory. To pass the course, students have to master three different tasks in a satisfactory manner with the possibility of retaking each of them once.

1.      The students have to either hand in the solutions to one problem-set or a research proposal (approximately 10 pages) on the basis of the microeconomic theory taught in the class. The hand-out date for the problem set is January 6, 2025 and hand-in date for either the research proposal or the solutions of the problem set is January 20, 2025.

2.      They have to present one academic research article mentioned in the list for potential presentations and comment on the presentation of another student in class.

3.      They have to write a referee report (approximately 4 pages) on an unpublished microeconomic theory paper of their own choice and hand it in until December 31, 2024.

Course literature (Indicative)

Selected Chapters from:

• Bolton, Patrick and Mathias Dewatripont (2005), Contract Theory, MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
• Chambers, Christopher P. and Federico Echenique (2016), Revealed Preference Theory, Econometric Society Monograph, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK. (available online in the CBS library)
• Gilboa, Itzhak (2009), Theory of Decision under Uncertainty, Econometric Society Monographs 45, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (available online in the CBS library)
• Jackson, Matthew O., Mechanism Theory (December 26, 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2542983 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2542983
• Krishna, Vijay (2010), Auction Theory, Second Edition, Academic Press: Amsterdam et al.
• Mas-Colell, Andreu, Michael D. Whinston and Jerry R. Green (1995), Microeconomic Theory, Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford.
• Osborne, Martin and Ariel Rubinstein (1994), A Course in Game Theory, MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
• Strzalecki, Tomasz (2023), Stochastic Choice Theory, Harvard University monograph (available online)

Selected Journal Articles

Teaching hours

The class includes 44 confrontation hours.

Lecturing Plan