Producers, Consumers, and Partial Equilibrium - by David Mandy (Paperback)

About the Book

Producers, Consumers, and Partial Equilibrium provides a systematic and accessible presentation of the full formal details in the core theories of producer and consumer choice under conditions of price taking; and covers the standard theories of competitive, monopoly, and oligopoly partial equilibrium among these economic actors. The book pulls together foundational content from many classic sources and organizes it in a self-contained format that rigidly adheres to optimization as the central behavioral postulate and analytical tool for economic theory. The book maintains a sharp focus on the properties of outcomes from optimizing behavior in varying environments. These properties are the refutable hypotheses from each optimization behavioral postulate, and they form the core content of this positive economic theory. In so doing, the book presents and documents the underlying formal structure of the theory with a higher degree of integration and completeness than is typical of Ph. D. textbooks in microeconomics.

Book Synopsis

Producers, Consumers, and Partial Equilibrium provides a systematic and accessible presentation of the full formal details in the core theories of producer and consumer choice under conditions of price taking; and covers the standard theories of competitive, monopoly, and oligopoly partial equilibrium among these economic actors. The book pulls together foundational content from many classic sources and organizes it in a self-contained format that rigidly adheres to optimization as the central behavioral postulate and analytical tool for economic theory.

The book maintains a sharp focus on the properties of outcomes from optimizing behavior in varying environments. These properties are the refutable hypotheses from each optimization behavioral postulate, and they form the core content of this positive economic theory. In so doing, the book presents and documents the underlying formal structure of the theory with a higher degree of integration and completeness than is typical of Ph.D. textbooks in microeconomics.

Review Quotes

"This textbook of advanced level covers almost all themes of modern microeconomic theory...presents state-of-the-art models and the mathematical apparatus of microeconomics...All chapters contain bibliographic notes and many exercises." --Zentralblatt MATH

"I wish I had David Mandy's book, Producers, Consumers, and Partial Equilibrium, during my many years of teaching the core theories of consumer and producer choice to graduate students. Working through the elegant and rigorous treatment plus the many exercises in Mandy's book will give the student a very solid foundation of understanding of this core material." --William A. Brock, University of Wisconsin, Madison and University of Missouri, Columbia

"This text is much more self-contained than many other modern treatment of core microeconomic theory. First-year graduate students will find this a great resource tying optimization and economics in a clear and logical development." --Jonathan Hamilton, University of Florida

"Producers, Consumers and Partial Equilibrium provides a rigorous, in depth, and self-contained treatment of the mathematics and fundamental results from classical microeconomic theory of consumer and producer behavior in a partial equilibrium context. Mandy's clear and logical presentation, together with the numerous exercises at the end of each chapter, make this book indispensable reading for doctoral students in Economics and related disciplines." --Carlos Martins-Filho, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Mandy takes students through the foundations of neoclassical economics. He shows how basic tools derived from optimization theory, namely, contemporary duality techniques, unify arguments whether they concern producer or consumer decisions. In all cases the ultimate objective is to derive comparative statics results in a systematic manner. Mandy accomplishes this task so well that his book could by profitably used by students learning this material on their own." --Robert Becker, Indiana University

"David Mandy has written an elegant book that deeply investigates both the necessary mathematical tools to study neoclassical models and the application of those tools to many economic environments. It will be an excellent text for both the "math camp" and first semester Ph.D. courses in economics." --Gary Biglaiser, University of North Carolina