Microeconomics

Economists honored for their work on contract theory, which has important implications for issues such as executive compensation that have been a focus of Institute research

An exclusive conversation with Richard Batley, Head of Macroeconomics at Lombard Street Research.

We are happy to announce that we are offering a second run of the online course which aims to introduce graduate students and interested persons generally to the basic methods and topics of standard microeconomics as taught at the Ph.D. level — with a bit of ‘attitude’!

Prof. Sanjeev Goyal explains his general theory of network formation based on individual incentives, and their economic implications

Does general equilibrium theory sufficiently enhance our understanding of the economic process to make the entire exercise worthwhile, if we consider that other forms of thinking may have been ‘crowded out’ as a result of its being the ‘dominant discourse’? What, in the end, have we really learned from it?

How economists turned to the study of collective decision-making after World War II, faced many impossibilities, and lost interest after solving them

One thing is now certain about the upcoming presidential election in the United States: the next president will not be a committed free trader.

Mass protests challenging the government to focus on job-creation rather than on market liberalization and trade deals may carry a cautionary message to Western policy makers, too.

Capitalism will destroy itself, the former Greek finance minister warns, if economic calculation excludes human needs and ignores democratic verdicts

The Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society’s report analyzes the Trans-Pacific Partnership and examines the widespread global implications in the event of its passage.

There is a deeper story to be told about the inclusion of the Renminbi.

How much does the standard theory of externalities and public goods really say?

This paper, which is prepared for the Inagural Conference of the Institute for New Economic Thinking in King’s College, Cambridge, 8-11 April 2010, questions the preeminence of theory over empirics in economics and argues that empirical econometrics needs to be given a more important and independent role in economic analysis, not only to have some confidence in the soundness of our empirical inferences, but to uncover empirical regularities that can serve as a basis for new economic thinking.

This paper asks, how empirical evidence does or does not influence economic thinking and theory. In particular, which role do calibration, statistical inference, and structural change play?