Syllabus for Economics 604(B) Draft Daniel R. Vincent: Spring 2009

 

Official Matters

Economics 604(B) is the second half of the second course in Economics Department’s two-semester core sequence in Microeconomics. This course is taken by all first-year Economics Ph.D. students, as well as by quite a few Ph.D. students in Agricultural & Resource Economics, the Smith School of Business, and other academic departments. This course covers decisions under uncertainty, expected utility theory, and the economics with private information including mechanism design, adverse selection and moral hazard.

All official course announcements will be posted HERE:

Announcements:

• The discussion session for Friday, April 3 has been moved for that week only to Wednesday, April 1, ARMORY Bldg, ARM  Rm: 0117 at 3.30pm. For the remainder of the term the discussions will be as noted below.

• The first lecture will be Tuesday, March 24.

• The afternoon lecture for Thursday, March 26 will be offered instead during discussion session this Friday, March 27.

 

Course Material

Lecture slides, problem sets, and old tests (where available) will be posted on a password-protected area:

http://econ-server.umd.edu/~vincent/econ604/lect.html

http://econ-server.umd.edu/~vincent/econ604/ps.html

http://econ-server.umd.edu/~vincent/econ604/test.html

The login and password for the restricted area will be announced in class.

Grading

The course grade will be determined by the performance on the final exam.

 

There will be about 5 ungraded problem sets for the second half of the course. For your reference, all of the problem sets from last year are currently posted on the password-protected web page, but some of these may be updated, and you should refer to the most recent version at the time of doing the problem sets.

The final exam—for both the morning and afternoon sections—is scheduled for Thursday, May 14, from 8 to 10am.  Any students having any known conflicts with either exam time should notify the professor immediately.

Texts

A. Mas-Colell, M. Whinston and J. Green (henceforth “MWG”), Microeconomic Theory, Oxford Univ. Press, 1995.

Course Times

Section 0201: Tuesdays/Thursdays 11:00 am - 12:15 pm, Tydings 1114

Section 0101: Tuesdays/Thursdays 2:00 pm - 3:15 pm, Tydings 2111

Discussion Section:  Fridays 12 noon - 2:30 pm, Tydings 2111

Teaching Assistant: Sushant Acharya: mailto:acharya@econ.umd.edu

Office Hours

Professor Vincent’s Office Hours: Wednesdays, 10:00 – 12:00 am, Tydings 4130B

Sushant Acharya Office Hours: Mondays 10-12, Tydings 5108

Topics for Second Half of Course (approximately one week per topic) (The links are not yet operating)