Teaching

This course is an intermediate level study of microeconomic theory, which aims to provide students with analytical and quantitative tools to think like an economist, to understand how consumers, firms and governments make decisions under scarcity. The methods and concepts taught in this course can help students to analyze a great number of phenomena in the economic and social sphere.

Course Structure

• The Basics of Market Mechanism

Consumer Theory

• Budget Contraint
• Preference and Utility
• Consumer Choice
• Demand
• Uncertainty

Producer Theory

• Production
• Cost
• Profit

Market Analysis

• Competitive Market
• Monopoly and Price Discrimination
• Game Theory and Imperfect Competition
• General Equilibrium and Welfare Economics

It is the first part of the one-year sequence in microeconomics. It is offered to the first year master and Ph.D. students under the Economics Discipline at Xiamen University, including the School of Economics, WISE and Chow Institute.

Throughout the study, the course will cover classic topics in microeconomic theory, such as consumer theory, producer theory, decision under uncertainty and general equilibrium analysis. The prerequisites for the course include intermediate microeconomics and undergraduate-level mathematics such as multivariate calculus, linear algebra and probability theory.

Course Structure

• Introduction
• Mathematics Review
• Consumer Theory
• Decision under Uncertainty
• Producer Theory
• Partial Equilibrium
• General Equilibrium

I had the privilege of serving as the teaching assistant for Professor John Riley’s Ph.D. microeconomics sequence, an experience from which I gained invaluable insights. This handout was prepared for my tutorial sessions and covers topics such as auctions, signaling, mechanism design, and more. Please feel free to use it in your classes. If you come across any errors or typos, I would greatly appreciate your feedback!
Lecture Notes

Game theory provides tools to analyze interactions among strategic agents. The key idea of a game is that agents’ payoffs, such as utility, profit or welfare, are determined by everybody’s behavior. Therefore, one must take others’ strategies into consideration when make his/her own.

The course introduces fundamental concepts in game theory, e.g. Nash equilibrium, mixed strategies, backward induction, commitment, sub-game perfect equilibrium, cooperation, incomplete information, Bayesian-Nash equilibrium and so on.
Lecture Slides