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This book introduces economic theory by concentrating on some of the most important matters with which theory deals. Beginning by developing the general criteria of efficiency in the allocation of resources between alternative uses, the book then illustrates how efficient allocation can be promoted directly, by state planning, or indirectly by private enterprise. An analysis of the working of business competition in both its free and restricted forms follows, and analysis of the determination of the general levels of production employment and prices is also included

Front Cover -- Economic Theory -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Presentation -- Preface -- List of Figures -- 1 The Universe of Economics -- 1.1 Introduction -- 1.2 The World of Economics -- 1.3 The Economic Universe -- 1.4 The Density of Wealth -- 1.5 Singularities in Communications -- 1.6 Singular Wealth -- 1.7 In the End it will be Chaos -- 1.8 When Light Bowed to Ceará -- 2 History of the Economic Formation -- 2.1 Introduction -- 2.2 The Ancient Feudal System and the Formation of the State -- 2.3 The End of the Feudal System and the Start of Democracy -- 2.4 The Development of the Post Feudal Economy -- 2.5 The Current Feudal System -- 2.6 About Tulips and Virtual Currency -- 3 On Capitalism -- 3.1 Introduction -- 3.2 Capitalism for Beginners -- 3.3 Economic Determinism and Wealth and Income Distribution -- 3.4 Virtual Companies Exploit the Real Work of Users -- 3.5 Virtual Companies Violate Classic Economics -- 3.6 How the Money of Private Companies Leave the Country -- 3.7 Corruption is Endemic in the Private -- 3.8 Tricks for Avoiding Taxes -- 4 The Main Concepts in Economics -- 4.1 Introduction -- 4.2 Definitions Associated with Economics -- 4.2.1 Macroeconomics -- 4.2.2 Microeconomics -- 4.2.3 Econometrics -- 4.3 Activities of Economic Nature -- 4.4 Economic Conditions -- 4.5 Economic Sectors -- 4.6 Utility and Value -- 4.7 Productive Economic Activity -- 5 Basic Mathematical Analysis -- 5.1 Basic Concepts in Economy -- 5.2 Demand Curves -- 5.3 Supply Curves -- 5.4 Average and Marginal Costs -- 5.5 Market Equilibrium -- 5.6 Simple and Compound Interests -- 5.7 Income Distribution -- 5.8 Consumption and Savings -- 5.9 Model for the Future Price of Stock -- 6 Microeconomics -- 6.1 Introduction -- 6.2 The Concept of Microeconomics -- 6.2.1 The Consumer and the Demand Curve -- 6.2.2 The Company and the Supply Curve.

[eng] This thesis is composed of 3 independent essays on economic theory. Each essay is meant to be read separately, including footnotes and appendices. In particular, essays 2 and 3 include specific bibliography. The general bibliography is included at the end of the thesis. The first essay reviews some well known conceptual and empirical problems that appear when economic theorists deal with preferences and choice theory, in general. While assessing those problems, the essay lays the ground for a detailed discussion of the possibility of preference learning, formation and change. The essay concludes proposing a theoretical framework to study these phenomena. The second essay, although independent from the first, is also devoted to the issue of preference change. In particular, it studies the possibility that cultural preferences evolve as a result of the combination of technological innovation and cultural transmission mechanisms. At the same time, it allows for the possibility that those cultural preferences determine the short term outcome of economic variables. In addition, it builds a framework where the combination of technological innovation, cultural transmission and economic structure lead to a process of endogenous preference heterogeneity and clustering. Hence it provides a model to understand how culture and the economic structure interact and coevolve. The third essay presents some theoretical problems that arise when using the concept of a matching function as a modelling device for the labor market. In particular, necessary conditions for the ratio of the number of matches per job searcher to be interpreted as the average job finding probability are established. References [Abel, 1990] Abel, A. B. (1990). Asset prices under habit formation and catching up with the joneses. The American Economic Review, pages 38-42. [Afriat, 1967] Afriat, S. (1967). The construction of utility functions from expenditure data. International Economic Review, 8(1):67-77. [Al-Najjar, 1993] Al-Najjar, N. (1993). Non-transitive smooth preferences. Journal of Economic Theory, 60(1):14 -41. [[Aragones et al., 2005] Aragones, E., Gilboa, I., Postlewaite, A., and Schmeidler, D. (2005). Fact-free learning. The American Economic Review, 95(5):1355-1368. [Ariely et al., 2003] Ariely, D., Loewenstein, G., and Prelec, D. (2003). coherent arbitrariness: Stable demand curves without stable preferences. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 118(1):73-106. [Arrow, 1986] Arrow, K. (1986). Rationality of self and others in an economic system. Journal of Business, pages 385-399. [Arrow and Hahn, 1971] Arrow, K. and Hahn, F. (1971). General competitive analysis. Holden-Day San Francisco.165 [Arrow, 1959] Arrow, K. J. (1959). Rational choice functions and orderings. Economica, 26(102):121-127. [Aumann, 1962] Aumann, R. (1962). Utility theory without the completeness axiom. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, pages 445-462. [Balasko, 2003] Balasko, Y. (2003). Economies with price-dependent preferences. Journal of economic theory, 109(2):333-359. [Balzer, 1982] Balzer, W. (1982). Empirical claims in exchange economics. In Philosophy of Economics, pages 16-40. Springer. [Becker, 1962] Becker, G. (1962). Irrational behavior and economic theory. The Journal of Political Economy, pages 1-13. [Becker, 1978] Becker, G. S. (1978). The economic approach to human behavior. University of Chicago Press. [Berry and Pakes, 2007a] Berry, S. and Pakes, A. (2007a). The pure characteristics demand model. International Economic Review, 48(4):1193-1225. [Berry and Pakes, 2007b] Berry, S. and Pakes, A. (2007b). The pure characteristics demand model*. International Economic Review, 48(4):1193-1225. [Bewley, 1986] Bewley, T. (1986). Knightian uncertainty theory: part i. Yale University. [Blaug, 1992] Blaug, M. (1992). The methodology of economics: Or, how economists explain. Cambridge University Press. [Boudon, 1998] Boudon, R. (1998). Social mechanisms without black boxes. Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory, 172. [Brown and Matzkin, 1996] Brown, D. and Matzkin, R. (1996). Testable restrictions on the equilibrium manifold. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society, pages 1249-1262. [Bunge, 1993] Bunge, M. (1993). Realism and antirealism in social science. Theory and Decision, 35(3):207-235. [Caldwell, 1984] Caldwell, B. J. (1984). Some problems with falsificationism in economics. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 14(4):489-495. [Chapman and Johnson, 1999] Chapman, G. B. and Johnson, E. J. (1999). Anchoring, activation, and the construction of values. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 79(2):115 -153. [Deaton and Muellbauer, 1980] Deaton, A. and Muellbauer, J. (1980). An almost ideal demand system. The American economic review, pages 312-326.

My dissertation is composed of three chapters. In the first, I study the incentive role of information – how the strategic release of information can induce an agent to exert more effort on a project. More specifically, I focus on how feedback can be provided to a worker who is uninformed about the progress they make on a long term project. I show that delaying feedback about their performance can induce the worker to continue working on the project longer than they would were they to learn about their performance without delay. Negative feedback, due to the absence of good news, received in the early stages of the project can cause them to quit prematurely. In the second chapter, I study a model of matching between individuals and institutions. Matching models allow researchers to identify optimal allocations of individuals to school seats, medical residency programs and other positions over which individuals have preferences and for which they may differ in suitability. While we know that in models in which individuals only care about the institution they match with, stable matchings always exist, I show that when individuals also care about the the number of matches made by the institution they join, stable matchings no longer exist in general. I show that stable matchings can only be found under a set of conditions I identify. Relaxing any of these conditions leads to examples of markets with no stable matchings. In the third chapter, I set out to understand why elected politicians choose to toe the party line instead of voting on issues according to their own preferences. I find that despite the short term benefits of voting for their preferred policies, there are long-term benefits from coordinating their voting behavior among like-minded legislators. These findings provide a rationale for why political parties form among politicians with similar policy positions.

Essays in Economic Theory, first published in 1983, combines two essays on game theory and its applications in economics. The first, ""Learning Behavior and the Noncooperative Equilibrium"", considers whether an adaptive justification, like those commonly available for the optimization models frequently employed elsewhere in economics, can be found for the Nash noncooperative equilibrium. The second essay, ""A Game of Fair Division"", was motivated by the desire to find attractive methods for solving allocation problems and bargaining disputes that are simple enough to provide useful alternatives

Wolff reviews 'Contemporary Economic Theory' edited by Andriana Vlachou.