Microeconomics: Optimization, Experiments, and Behavior - Hardcover

Burkett, John P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195189620 ISBN 13: 9780195189629

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

In this book, John P. Burkett presents microeconomics as an evolving science, interacting with mathematics, psychology, and other disciplines and offering solutions to a growing range of practical problems. The book shows how early contributors such as Xenophon, Ibn Khaldun, and David Hume posed the normative and positive questions central to microeconomics. It expounds constrained optimization techniques, as developed by economists and mathematicians from Daniel Bernoulli to Leonid Kantorovich, emphasizing their value in deriving norms of rational behavior and testable hypotheses about typical behavior. Applying these techniques, the book introduces partial equilibrium analysis of particular markets and general equilibrium analysis of market economies. The book both explains how laboratory and field experiments are used in testing economic hypotheses and provides materials for classroom experiments. It gives extensive and innovative coverage of recent findings in cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, which not only document behavior inconsistent with some traditional theories, but also advance positive theories with superior predictive power.

About this title

About the Author

John P. Burkett is Professor of Economics at the University of Rhode Island, where he has been teaching since 1981. He has taught comparative economics, econometrics and statistics, health economics, history of economic thought, international economics, macroeconomics, and microeconomics. He is active in the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

Review

"A wonderful new competitor in the world of microeconomics texts. Burkett's experience as a teacher, his respect for the student, his love of mathematics, and his dry sense of humor all shine through in this book. Thoughtful servings of material on experiemental and behavioral economics, and comments on scientific method and on the history of the subject matter, in no way compromise careful coverage of the standard microeconomics tools. The book is full of delightful examples and exercises, such as designed a cost-efficient diet for the tyrannosaurs and raptors in Jurassic Park or performign a scientific experiment on scale economies and learning-by-doing by making paper airplanes called 'Micro Gliders.'"--Louis Putterman, Professor of Economics, Brown University

"A major challenge in teaching intermediate microeconomics is in providing evidence for the truth and usefulness of the analysis. Most of the econometric evidence is inaccessible to students not trained in problems of identification, sample detection, etc. Burkett solves this problem by using the large amount of evidence that has accumulated from experimental economics and this naturally leads the student beyond the standard optimizing models to behavioral economics. This together with the engaging presentation and historical background to the concepts makes for a lively and instructive text."--Ron Smith, Professor of Applied Economics, Birkbeck College, London

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0195189620
• ISBN 13: 9780195189629
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352