Who is he?

Outline            Introduction: What is economics?             

                                     Becker on the methodology of economics  

                               Raghu Rajan's prediction-cum-analysis of the impending crisis (Kansas Fed Jackson Hole Meeting, 2005)

                               Paul Krugman on "How did economists get it so wrong?" (by not predicting the crisis, that is)

                               John Cochrane on "How did Paul Krugman get it so wrong?" (by faking he was asleep the last 20 years, that is)

                               Narayana Kocherlakota's "Thoughts on Macro"

please fill in and get back to me in class

Rational Choice  Kahneman and  Rabin on psychology and economics    Problem set 1

Consumer Choice        Problem set 2

Equilibrium                 Problem set 3 

                                                                      Stigler on Ricardo's Labor Theory of Value  

Consumption, Savings, and Portfolios        Meghir on Friedman's Permanent Income

                                                              On fiscal policy multipliers (thanks to John T. Kounelias) 

Time and uncertainty      Problem set 4

Empirical economics: identification, selection, and causation    NYTimes on identification of social interactions effects

Some extra problems to prepare for the midterm: math  rationality  consumer choice  savings and growth  finance    

Finance              Problem set 5                                Lucas on  neutrality   

Ricardian Equivalence, a.k.a. Arithmetics

Time Inconsistency of Optimal Policy        Sargent-Wallace on arithmetic -  

Kydland-Prescott on time inconsistency -

Incentives     

Growth         play with the Penn World Data  and with the evolution of the distribution of income (from X. Sala i Martin)               

read the papers 1  2  Villaverde on Long Run Growth 

Game Theory     Problem set 6

• Watch  Dr. Strangelove , by Stanley Kubrik. Formalize the decision problem of the Russians and the Americans as a game and discuss equilibria.

• The best reference for Game Theory at the level of this course is: An Introduction to Game Theory, by Martin J. Osborne, Oxford University Press, 2004. Find some chapters here.

Game theory practice problems

Some "fun" readings   

              Addenda:    Math Preliminaries 1 2+(graphs)      Problems    

                               Probability (2003)