–
- Code:
- ECON-L2200
- Field:
- Microeconomics
- Targets:
- Research Master's students PhD students
- Organiser:
- Aalto University
- Instructor:
- Juuso Välimäki
- Period:
- Period 2
- Format:
- Lecture
- Method:
- Contact teaching
- Venue:
- Economicum
- Enrollment:
In case of conflicting information consider the Sisu/MyCourses pages the primary source of information.
Hanken and UH economics students can enroll in their home university’s SISU! Further instructions can be found on the How to enroll? page, also for other students.
Before taking and completing the course make sure that the credits can be counted towards your degree at your home university by checking which courses are included in your curriculum or by contacting your home university’s student/learning services.
Lectures and exercises will be streamed for FDPE students (outside the capital region), but not for Helsinki GSE students (Aalto, Hanken and UH students). A link to the stream will be sent by Jenni Rytkönen in a separate email a few days before the course starts. If you don’t receive the link, please contact Jenni (jenni.rytkonen@aalto.fi).
- To access the course workspace, use all the features and participate in the activities (assignments, discussions), you must have successfully registered for the course in Sisu and logged in with your Aalto user ID.
- For more information on how to activate your Aalto user ID and register for a MyCourses course area, click here.
Content
Part II of the Ph.D. and research master sequence in microeconomic theory is an introduction to collective decisions and market institutions. The emphasis in the course is on analytical concepts used in assessing societal decisions. Efficiency and stability are key ideas that recur during the course. Different economic institutions in diverse economic models are analyzed using these concepts and stability. The course builds directly on Microeconomic Theory I and it is essential that the students have a good understanding of decision theory and classical consumer theory. Some connections to strategic decision making covered in Microeconomic Theory III are mentioned, but the course does not assume any prior knowledge of game theory. The central topics in the course include: Social Choice Theory, Assignment Models, Matching Models, and General Equilibrium Theory.
Learning outcomes
After completing Microeconomic Theory II, the student should understand the connections between individual preferences and societal outcomes in the case of centralized mechanisms such as the Gale-Shapley algorithm in matching markets and the decentralized price mechanism in competitive markets. The student should also be able to construct and analyze different models of collective choice and market behavior and relate the stylized models covered in the course to more complex real life economic settings.