Microeconomics Books

Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisEste libro está pensado para un primer curso de economía. Puede utilizarse como texto principal en un curso de introducción o como complemento de un libro de texto tradicional de principios de economía. El libro alterna los “capítulos experimentales” con “capítulos analíticos”. La alternancia de un experimento y un debate marca el ritmo de la clase. En el laboratorio, los estudiantes participan y experimentan en un tipo de mercado, por ejemplo, o en una determinada interacción social. Los informes de laboratorio que tienen que escribir les permiten poner en orden sus reflexiones sobre lo que ha ocurrido. En la clase siguiente, están preparados para debatir los resultados experimentales y examinar las explicaciones teóricas de estos resultados.Los capítulos experimentales normalmente contienen una introducción, las instrucciones para realizar un experimento en clase y un “informe de laboratorio”. Los experimentos se realizan “a mano”, sin ordenadores o aparatos complejos. En el informe de laboratorio, los alumnos anotan los resultados, realizan un análisis elemental de los datos y responden a algunas preguntas que los animan a pensar sobre la importancia de lo que han observado. Los capítulos analíticos introducen las teorías económicas que explican, en todo o en parte, los resultados experimentales. También contienen trabajos para casa en los que se pide a los alumnos que comparen los resultados experimentales con las predicciones teóricas y analicen las consecuencias que las teorías y los experimentos permiten extraer para su aplicación a los problemas del mundo real.Los módulos de análisis están pensados para ser lo suficientemente independientes unos de otros de tal manera que los profesores puedan cambiar el orden de presentación de los temas u omitir los que deseen.Para un estudiante, cursar una asignatura de economía experimental es un poco como estar invitado a comer en casa de un caníbal. Puede ocurrir que sea simplemente un comensal, que sea parte de la comida o que sea ambas cosas a la vez.En un curso de laboratorio de ciencias naturales, los estudiantes tienen que mezclar sustancias químicas o andar tirando de poleas o diseccionar la proverbial rana, pero siempre son ellos quienes experimentan y nunca son los sujetos del experimento. En cambio, en los experimentos que se realizan en esta clase, los estudiantes son a la vez los participantes en los mercados, y los observadores científicos que tratan de entender los resultados de estos mismos mercados experimentales.Es difícil imaginar que un químico pueda ponerse en el lugar de una molécula de hidrógeno. Es improbable que un biólogo que estudia la conducta animal sepa lo que sienten los patos. El estudiante de este curso es más afortunado. Estudiará la conducta y las interacciones de la gente en situaciones económicas. Y siendo uno de estos agentes económicos, podrá experimentar de primera mano los problemas con los que se encuentra uno de ellos. Sospechamos que su experiencia como participante en el experimento le permitirá comprender los principios económicos casi tanto como su análisis como observador del experimento.

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Book SynopsisThis report aims at deepening understanding of trends and developments in trade, investment and regional integration in the Asia-Pacific region. It looks at emerging issues in trade, investment and trade facilitation policies, and the impacts such policies have on countries' abilities to meet the challenges of achieving inclusive and sustainable development. It offers innovative policy options to meet the challenges of achieving sustainable trade and investment. It is aimed at policymakers, practitioners, experts, academics, business, international agencies and NGOs. It contains country specific briefs and shows trends and developments of trade in goods, trade in services, foreign direct investment, and trade and investment policies over 2017-2018.

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Book SynopsisThis edition of International Trade Outlook for Latin America and the Caribbean covers 2021 reviews the recent performance of global and regional trade following the crisis caused by the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The pandemic triggered a significant loss of export capacity in the region, affecting micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in particular. The COVID-19 pandemic has underscored the strategic nature of this industry, not only because of its direct link to public health, but also because it is an innovative sector with significant technological externalities

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Book SynopsisThe tenth edition of the report on Assessing Regional Integration in Africa (ARIA X) is on the theme:'Africa's services trade liberalization and integration under the AfCFTA' The report seeks to deepen understanding and appreciation of the critical role of services to trade, production and the economy in Africa. It critically analyses the types of approaches to liberalisation of trade in services and regional regulatory cooperation under the AfCFTA, which have the most potential to support Africa's development, including through the enhancement of intra-African trade in services, enabling of better and more effective integration into regional and global value chains, the enforcement of both public and privates sector capacities and overall greater competitiveness in an increasingly digitalising global economy

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Book SynopsisKey to China's plans to promote rural development is the de-marginalisation of the countryside through the incorporation of rural areas into the urban-based market-oriented financial system. For this reason, Chinese development planners have turned to microcredit -- i.e. the provision of small-scale loans to 'financially excluded' rural households -- as a means of increasing 'financial consciousness' and facilitating rural de-marginalisation. Drawing on in-depth fieldwork in rural China, this book examines the formulation, implementation and outcomes of government-run microcredit programmes in China-illuminating the diverse roles that microcredit plays in local processes of socioeconomic development and the livelihoods of local actors. It details how microcredit facilitates de-marginalisation for some, while simultaneously exacerbating the marginalisation of others; and exposes the ways in which microcredit and other top-down development strategies reflect and reinforce the contradictions and paradoxes implicit in rural China's contemporary development landscape.Trade Review"This is a detailed and thoroughly compelling study that anyone with an interest in the workings of the Chinese economy and society, as well as the impact of microcredit, will simply have to acquire." - Milford Bateman, author of *Why Doesn't Microfinance Work? The Destructive Rise of Local Neoliberalism*Table of ContentsFront Material 1. Introduction 1.1 Contested and Paradoxical Rural Development in China 1.2 The Rise of the Global Microfinance Movement and the Adoption of Microcredit in Rural China 1.3 Research Questions and Objectives 1.4 Research Methodology and Fieldwork Sites 1.5 Book Outline 2. Rural Financial Services in China: Historical and Literature Review 2.1 The Trajectories and Contours of the Rural Financial Landscape since 1949 2.2 Research on Rural Financial Services in China 2.3 Conclusion 3. Making Microcredit: Policy Formulation and Implementation 3.1 The Formulation of Microcredit Policy 3.2 A Tale of Three Townships: Microcredit Implementation at the Local Level 3.3 Conclusion 4. Variation in Microcredit Implementation: Understanding Heterogeneity from a Relational Perspective 4.1 Differentiated Financial Landscapes and Segmented Financial Markets 4.2 Strategising and Rationalising Pressures and Incentives 4.3 Interpersonal Relationships and Negotiations at the Interface 4.4 Emergence and Complexity in Implementation Outcomes 4.5 Conclusion 5. Microcredit as Modernisation and De-marginalisation 5.1 The Linear Progression Development Paradigm 5.2 Local Interpretations of Microcredit as a Means of De-marginalisation 5.3 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through Capital, Knowledge, and Technology Transfers 5.4 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through the Formation of New Socio-political and Socioeconomic Linkages 5.5 Microcredit as De-marginalisation Through Employment, Local Cooperation, and Financial Inclusion 5.6 Microcredit and Local Livelihood Improvement 5.7 Conclusion 6. Microcredit, Precarious Livelihoods and Undercurrents of Marginalisation 6.1 The Unequal Foundations of Development and Relational Marginality 6.2 The Rural-Urban Dichotomy and Relational Marginality in the Chinese Context 6.3 Microcredit as Resource Diversion and Extraction 6.4 Microcredit as Elite Capture and Exclusion 6.5 Microcredit as Precarity, Risk, and Exploitation 6.6 Conclusion 7. Conclusion 7.1 In Summary 7.2 Key Findings 7.3 Directions for Future Research End Material - Bibliography - Interview Lists - Index

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Book SynopsisEfficiency is the most important objective in economics and this book shows how it can be analyzed using input and output data at all levels of the economy. After his 'Input-Output Economics: Theory and Applications', Thijs ten Raa has extended his research to efficiency analysis. He has contributed to the microeconomic theory of performance measurement, made applications to industries, national economies and international trade, and written on the history of economic thought. Twenty-five new papers, published in the last decade are now collected and interrelated by an introduction, amounting to a unification of theory and applications in efficiency and input-output analyses.Efficiency analysts measure firm performance relative to the best practice, which is determined by a firm (or collection of firms) operating on the frontier of the production possibilities. More precisely, efficiency is relative productivity, where the latter is essentially output per 'unit' of input. On the other hand, input-output analysts study input per 'unit' of output. The concept of the one is the inverse of the other and this insight will help resolve open issues in either branch of economic science. Environmental objectives are shown to be achievable by reallocations of production. Benchmarking theory is developed and used to measure how well (or poor) industries and economies are organized. Papers on the history of economic thought round out the volume.

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Book SynopsisIn this book the author analyzes measures of consumer well-being. The three main, neoclassical measures of well-being are the compensating variation, the equivalent variation, and consumer's surplus. The question is which of the measures of consumer well-being is the best. This book tackles the question, with a surprising outcome that is contrary to the main opinion in the literature. Prof ten Raa presents a test that measures must pass to track utility. The test will be used to sort measures in the remainder of the book. It will culminate in a variant of consumer's surplus, which he calls the consumer's index, and a generalization that applies to nonhomothetic demands. Variants of the consumer's index are presented, including ones that are applicable to demand functions with income effects, even nonlinear ones. So-called broad measures of consumer well-being, such as the Human Development Index, will be encompassed.

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Book SynopsisPeople pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, while others have interests that are broad and altruistic. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.Following some foundational remarks, this book studies the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. That theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set. The book then studies numerous refinements, generalizations and extensions of each of these restrictions — up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice and choice behaviour when preferences are intransitive/incomplete/discontinuous. Also considered is choice behaviour in environments that are not necessarily compact. A study is also made of intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty. The study of Arrow-Debreu choice theory and its extensions are presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Beginning with a study of the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, the book considers extensions and generalizations of this framework, particularly to non-convex environments. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here help inform answers of the second question posed above.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12789-sm

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Book SynopsisPeople pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, while others have interests that are broad and altruistic. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.Following some foundational remarks, this book studies the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. That theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set. The book then studies numerous refinements, generalizations and extensions of each of these restrictions — up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice and choice behaviour when preferences are intransitive/incomplete/discontinuous. Also considered is choice behaviour in environments that are not necessarily compact. A study is also made of intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty. The study of Arrow-Debreu choice theory and its extensions are presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Beginning with a study of the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, the book considers extensions and generalizations of this framework, particularly to non-convex environments. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here help inform answers of the second question posed above.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12789-sm

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Book SynopsisThis introductory textbook on social choice theory makes the social choice theoretic framework and its main results, that have a direct bearing on the discourses on electoral rules and policy evaluation, accessible to a larger audience. The text is essentially self-contained. No previous knowledge of mathematical logic or relational algebra is assumed. Whatever technical prerequisites are needed, are developed in the text itself. Although the text is at an introductory level, there has been no compromise on rigor. Unlike most introductory books, the relevant proofs are not omitted; rather, they have been explained in detail. The text has a large number of examples so that the concepts and results become clear to the reader. There is a large number of exercises with full solutions provided at the end of the text, so that the reader can check her/his understanding of the material.Table of ContentsIntroduction.- Elementary Logic.- Sets, Relations, Functions.- Binary Relations.- Social Choice Theoretic Framework and Arrow Impossibility Theorem.- Some Important Value-Judgments, Rules and Theorems.- Implications of Weakening of Some of Arrow Conditions.- The Method of Majority Decision: Conditions for Transitivity and Quasi-Transitivity.- Strategic Aspects.- Summary and Concluding Remarks.

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Book SynopsisThis textbook is designed as a guide for students of mathematical economics, with the aim of providing them with a firm foundation for further studies in economics. A substantial portion of the mathematical tools required for the study of microeconomics at the graduate level is covered, in addition to the standard elements of microeconomics and various applications. Theorems and definitions are clearly explained with numerous exercises to complement the text and to help the student better understand and master the principles of mathematical economics.Table of ContentsSets and Functions; What Is Mathematics?; Matrix Algebra; Linear Algebra; Calculus of One Variable; Calculus of Several Variables; Techniques of Optimization; Odds and Ends; Preferences, Utility, and Demand; Supply; Game Theory; Welfare and General Equilibrium; Applications.

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Book SynopsisThe author has virtually incomparable experience in both providing trade policy advice to more than 25 countries on behalf of the World Bank and also publishing quality journal articles in most of those cases. In this volume, he focuses on his work on: (i) trade policies for countries making the transition from planned to market economies; (ii) his trade policy guideline papers for the World Bank on trade policies for poverty alleviation, uniform tariff policy, adjustment costs of trade liberalization, exchange rate overvaluation, globalization and technology transfer and rules of thumb on regional trade policies; (iii) multilateral, dynamic and environmental issues in trade policy using computable general equilibrium models; (iv) trade policy of the United States in the auto and steel industries; and (v) mathematical methods for modeling. The papers show an unusual combination of policy relevance, advice and impact, with rigor and international trade theory insights.The papers in this volume have appeared in many of the economics profession's more prestigious journals, including Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, the Journal of International Economics, International Economic Review, European Economic Review, Canadian Journal of Economics, Economic Inquiry, the Journal of Comparative Economic, Review of International Economics, World Economy, the Southern Economic Journal, the World Bank Economic Review, the Japanese Economic Review and the Latin American Journal of Economics. In this book, the author elaborates on the articles by discussing some of the policy contexts for the requests for the work from developing and transition countries to the World Bank, the key trade theory or policy insights, policy recommendations and conclusions and the policy impacts.

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Book SynopsisThe Retail and Food Services sectors play an important role in Singapore. They add to the vibrancy of the economy and contribute to the social well-being of Singaporeans. At the same time, they are often highlighted and scrutinised for their low productivity performance and high reliance on manpower. There is to date a lack of local literature that addresses the issues faced by the two sectors at the enterprise and worker levels.This timely book includes major topics in services productivity in the Singapore context, with emphasis on Retail and Food Services. Topics covered include the key productivity levers of the services sectors: holistic productivity measurement framework, effective entrepreneurship, manpower management, promotion by social media, marketing, costing process and accounting sophistication. These areas are explored through literature reviews and in-depth interviews with companies and consumers. The chapters also include recommendations for policy makers and industry stakeholders. Written in a simple and accessible manner, this book will serve as an insightful guide to researchers, policy-makers, industry practitioners and enterprises and those who are keen to learn from the Singapore experience.

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Book SynopsisMicroeconomics studies the choices made by individuals under conditions of scarcity of resources and time and the interaction between different decision makers. Scarcity forces economic actors to choose one opportunity among many. Microeconomics with Spreadsheets starts with the mathematical preliminaries and covers consumer theory, producer theory, general equilibrium, game theory, market structure and economics of information.The reader will use numerical tools to analyse problems that cannot be analysed analytically. There is a natural synergy between rigorous proofs and numerical methods, since before using a numerical method one should also prove that a solution exists and analyse whether it is unique, and therefore be able to interpret properly the output of a program.

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Book SynopsisLack of credit access is severe in low income and poor families that are normally considered to have fewer opportunities to borrow from banks due to insufficient valuable assets for collateral. These low-income households face limited opportunity to acquire new technology and working capital for agricultural production and thus tend to fall behind. As a result, providing access to finance to low-income rural households has been considered an important component of any rural development strategy. Microfinance programmes, in particular, have been gradually embedded in national strategies of many developing countries as they are poverty-focused. They aim to facilitate the access to financial services such as credit for the poor who are usually disadvantaged in terms of access to conventional financial services from formal financial institutions. The objective of this book is to provide an overview of microfinance programmes in Asia focusing in particular on the determinants of the accessibility of rural households to microcredit. The book studies seven Asian countries such as China, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh with two specific case studies.

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