Postgraduate Course: Advanced Topics in Microeconomics (ECNM11006)
Course Outline
| School | School of Economics |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 10 |
ECTS Credits | 5 |
| Summary | The course aims to widen and deepen the acquired knowledge in the core microeconomics course. The first three weeks focus on the sorting decisions of economic agents across a range of markets. The aim is to provide students with the tools to understand the market forces that determine which agents end up in which organisation (or teams, or countries), and to analyse the influence this sorting process wields on the distribution of welfare in the markets. The second part of the course will zoom into the interactions that happen within organisations, with a particular focus on how to design mechanisms that improve the efficiency of these interactions. |
| Course description |
The course is organised as weekly three-hour lectures. There are two parts to the course. Part A, which is taught by Dr Pawel Gola, and Part B, which is taught by Dr Dimitri Migrow.
Part A:
Sorting with transferable utility
Equilibrium sorting patterns
Efficiency
Comparative Statics
Applications (e.g. marriage market and welfare impact of migration)
Two-sided sorting with non-transferable utility
Stability
Deferred Acceptance Algorithm
Strategy-proofness
Sorting with imperfectly transferable utility
What makes utility imperfectly transferable?
Sorting patterns and generalised increasing differences
Application: Risk-sharing within marriage
Application: sorting of principals and agents
Part B:
Agency, contract theory and organizations I: Moral hazard principal-agent model
Full information benchmark
Optimal contracts with hidden action
Illustrations: financial contracts and insurance
Agency, contract theory and organizations II: Adverse selection principal-agent model
Revelation principle and hidden knowledge
Illustration I: Costly verification and debt contracts
Illustration II: Regulation of firms with unobservable costs
Auctions and mechanism design
First price auction, second price auction and revenue comparison
Optimal selling mechanism
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
Microeconomics 1 (ECNM11023) AND
Microeconomics 2 (ECNM11025)
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | Students should be enrolled on MSc Economics, MSc Economics (Econometrics), MSc Economics (Finance) or MSc Mathematical Economics and Econometrics.
Any other students must email sgpe@ed.ac.uk in advance to request permission.
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Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Students should be enrolled on MSc Economics, MSc Economics (Econometrics), MSc Economics (Finance) or MSc Mathematical Economics and Econometrics.
Any other students must email sgpe@ed.ac.uk in advance to request permission.
|
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
|
| Academic year 2024/25, Available to all students (SV1)
|
Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Block 4 (Sem 2) |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
100
(
Lecture Hours 18,
Summative Assessment Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 2,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
78 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
100 %,
Coursework
0 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
One two-hour final examination in the April/May Diet. The written exam is based on content covered in the lectures, tutorials, and required readings.
The final exam includes two sections of two questions each (corresponding to the material covered by each instructor). Students will have to answer two questions, with one from each section. |
| Feedback |
Not entered |
| Exam Information |
| Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours & Minutes |
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| Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | | 2:00 | |
Learning Outcomes
| The learning outcomes are partially assessed through the formal assessment on the course. Students will have an opportunity to attain these outcomes through their engagement with the course such as attendance of lectures and participation in tutorials, and also through independent study of the material.
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Reading List
Part A:
Michael Sattinger, ¿Differential Rents and the Distribution of Earnings¿, Oxford Economic Papers, Volume 31, Issue 1, March 1979, Pages 60¿71,
Roth, Alvin E., and Marilda A. Oliveira Sotomayor. Two-Sided Matching: A Study in Game-Theoretic Modeling and Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Chapter 2 and 4.1-4.4.
Legros, Patrick, and Andrew F. Newman. ¿Beauty Is a Beast, Frog Is a Prince: Assortative Matching with Nontransferabilities.¿ Econometrica 75, no. 4 (2007): 1073¿1102.
Part B:
Gravelle, H. and Rees, R. (2004) Microeconomics. Pearson education.
Jehle, G. and Reny, P. (2011) Advanced Microeconomic Theory. 3rd Edition, Financial Times Prentice Hall, London.
Laffont, J. J. and Martimort, D. (2002). The Theory of Incentives: The Principal-Agent Model. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mas-Colell, A., M.D. Whinston and J.R. Green, Microeconomic Theory (OUP, 1995). |
Additional Information
| Course URL |
http://www.sgpe.ac.uk/ |
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Pawel Gola
Tel:
Email: pawel.gola@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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