Graduate Microeconomics III

This site contains the course material in Graduate Microeconomics III, a field course at the phd level. You find the course description, course schedule and class material.

  1. Class material
  2. Course schedule
  3. Course description [PDF]

Course schedule

Dec. 12 (R42 5.116) Lecture 12. FNRS Grant application review

  • 10.00 - 10:20 Lisa
  • 10:20 - 10:40 Anousheh
  • 10.40 - 11.00 Clement
  • 11.00 - 11.20 Marie
  • 11.20 - 11.40 Stefano
  • 11.40 - 12.00 Umutcan

Dec. 5 (R42 2.113) Lecture 11.

  • Anousheh: presentation
  • Discussion about FNRS Grant Application process and structure

Nov. 28 (R42 5.116) Lecture 10.

  • Umutcan: Affirmative action in school choice mechanisms
    • Ergin and Sonmez (2006) Games of school choice under the Boston mechanism, Journal of Public Economics
  • Marie: Shocks in production networks
    • Barrot and Sauvagnat (2016) Input specificity and the propagation of idiosycratic shocks in production networks, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Nov. 21 (R42 5.116) Lecture 9.

  • Anousheh: Public good provision
    • Cohen and Werker (2008) The political economy of "natural" disasters, Journal of Conflict Resolution
  • Clement: Non-standard updating
    • Kamenica and Gentzkow (2011) Bayesian Persuasion, American Economic Review

Nov. 16 (R42 5.116) Lecture 8.

  • Stefano: Social uprising and unrest
    • Akerlof and Kranton (2000) Economics and identify, Quarterly Journal of Economics
  • Umutcan: Affirmative action and school choice
    • Dutta and Masso (1997) Stability of matching when individuals have preferences over colleagues, Journal of Economic Theory

Nov. 5 (R42 5.116) Lecture 7.

  • Marie: Cascading in networks
    • Baqaee (2018) Cascading failures in production networks, Econometrica
  • Lisa: Access to quality healthcare
    • Nyman (1999) The value of health insurance: the access motive, Journal of Health Economics
    • Costa and Garcia (2003) Demand for private health insurance: how important is the quality gap? Health Economic

Oct. 31 (R42 5.116) Lecture 6.

  • Anousheh: Multitasking and public good provision
    • Holmstrom and Milgrom (1991) Multitask principal-agent analysis: incentive contracts, asset ownership and job design, Journal of Law, Economics, & Organization
  • Clement: Non-standard updating
    • Epstein (2006) An axiomatic model of non-bayesian updating, Review of Economic Studies
  • Salvador: Dividend policy and regulation
    • Bremberger et al. (2016) Dividend policy in regulated network industries: evidence from the eu, Economic Inquiry

Oct. 17 (R42 5.116) Lecture 5.

  • Stefano: Information sharing and fighting
    • Bergman, Shapiro and Felter (2011) Can hearts and minds be bought? the economics of counterinsurgency in iraq, Journal of Political Economy

Oct. 10 (R42 5.116) Lecture 4.

  • Lisa: National health insurance and health outcomes from children
    • Becker (1968) Crime and Punishment: An economic approach, Journal of Political Economy
    • Hausman, Rodrik and Velasco (2004) Growth Diagnostics, The Washington Consensus reconsidered: towards a new global governance
  • Marie: Production networks, risk sharing and natural disasters
    • Akbarpout and Jackson (2018) Diffusion in Networks and the Virtue of Burstiness, Working paper, Stanford

Oct. 3 (R42 5.116) Lecture 3.

  • Anousheh: Externalities in public good provision
    • Besley and Case (2003) Political Institutions and Policy Choices: evidence from the united states, Journal of Economic Literature
  • Clement:
    • Benabou and Tirole (2002) Self-confidence and personal motivation, Quarterly Journal of Economics

Sept. 26 (R42 5.116) Lecture 2.

  • Salvador: Corporate finance and investments in regulated industries
    • Spiegel (1996) The choice of technology and capital structure under rate regulation, International Journal of Industrial Organization
    • Kuhn (2002) Technology choice and capital structure under rate regulation: a comment,International Journal of Industrial Organization
  • Stefano: Social uprising and unrest
    • Besley and Persson (2011) The logic of political violence, Quarterly Journal of Economics
    • Morris and Shin (1998) Unique equilibrium in a model of self-fulfilling currency attacks, American Economic Review

Sept. 19 (R42 5.116) Lecture 1. Setup and structure

Background reading ("required" in bold):

  • Dekel and Lipman (2010) How (not) to do decision theory, Annual Review of Economics
  • Morgenstern (1972) Thirteen critical points in contemporary economic theory: an interpretation, Journal of Economic Literature
  • Gabaix and Laibson (2008) The seven properties of good models, The methodologies of modern economics: foundations of positive and normative economics
  • Card, DellaVigna and Malmendier (2011) The role of theory in field experiments, Journal of Economic Perspectives
      • Descriptive
        • Miguel and Kremer (2004) Works: identifying impacts on education and health in the presence of treatment externalities, Econometrica
      • Single model
        • Nagin et al. (2002) Monitoring, motivation and management: the determinants of opportunistic behavior in a field experiment, American Economic Review
      • Competing models
        • Ferh and Goette (2007) Do workers work more if wages are high? Evidence from a randomized field experiment, American Economic Review
      • Parameter estimation
        • Tood and Wolpin (2006) Assessing the impact of a school subsidy program in Mexico: using a social experiment to validate a dynamic behavioral model of child schooling and fertility, American Economic Review

Course description

Graduate microeconomics 3 is a reading group in microeconomic theory. The course aims to teach participants how to think about research in microeconomic theory.

Target audience

You work or want to work on theory for your research. Especially welcome are our colleagues whose work is empirical but want to formalize a mechanism for the relations you study.

Example

Banerjee, A., Chandrasekhar, A., Duflo, E. and Jackson, M. (2016) Gossip: Identifying central individuals in a social network, Working paper MIT

They want to understand how information on a loan system spreads in several villages in India (i.e., network theory and data on village networks)

Eligible students

Students in the research master or phd students.

Please send me an email if you want to attend, audit the course, or have any questions about the fit of the course with your research. Then we can start planning the reading list, discuss papers to be included and the final structure.

Reading list

Whatever you want to work on, as long as it has a microeconomic theory component. For example: applied theory for an empirical paper and applied or pure theory.

Structure

· Discussion (20%): Every week we discuss 3 papers (3x30 min): motivation, insight, contribution/novelty and importance (no first-order conditions). Then we discuss what the paper lacks or what the natural next directions for research are. I lead the discussion for one paper each week and two students lead the discussion on the other two papers.

· Referee report (20%): Halfway in the course you write a referee report on a paper you chose. This report is to further understand the state of the art in your field to improve your paper’s contribution.

· FNRS grant proposal (60%): The final evaluation is to write a four page grant proposal (including references) on goal of research, state of the art, methodology, preliminary results and contribution. Deadline: 9am on December 10. (The deadline for an FNRS phd grant is end of February. So you can get comments before you submit.)

Location, time and duration

Wednesday 10.30 - 12.00, R42 5.116-117 “Large Winch”

September 19 - December 12 (11/12 sessions in total)

Ideal class size: 8-12 students.