This collection of readings provides a broad overview of the major theoretical concepts in the field and includes papers on industry size, quantity and price competition, entry barriers, product differentiation, incomplete information and general equilibrium with imperfect competition.

The first textbook to present a comprehensive and detailed economic analysis of electricity markets, analyzing the tensions between microeconomics and political economy. The power industry is essential in our fight against climate change. This book is the first to examine in detail the microeconomics underlying power markets, stemming from peak-load pricing, by which prices are low when the installed generation capacity exceeds demand but can rise a hundred times higher when demand is equal to installed capacity. The outcome of peak-load pricing is often difficult to accept politically, and the book explores the tensions between microeconomics and political economy. Understanding peak-load pricing and its implications is essential for designing robust policies and making sound investment decisions. Thomas-Olivier Léautier presents the model in its simplest form, and introduces additional features as different issues are presented. The book covers all segments of electricity markets: electricity generation, under perfect and imperfect competition; retail competition and demand response; transmission pricing, transmission congestion management, and transmission constraints; and the current policy issues arising from the entry of renewables into the market and capacity mechanisms. Combining anecdotes and analysis of real situations with rigorous analytical modeling, each chapter analyzes one specific issue, first presenting findings in nontechnical terms accessible to policy practitioners and graduate students in management or public policy and then presenting a more mathematical analytical exposition for students and researchers specializing in the economics of electricity markets and for those who want to understand and apply the underlying models.

Economic space is the distance that separates economic agents such as manufacturers and consumers. Distance naturally imposes costs on the economic agents, but it has long been a neglected element in orthodox economic theory, one thought to complicate the issue unnecessarily. However, the theoretical implications of assuming away spatial elements may be especially significant for pricing practices and hence for competition. This volume shows why and in what ways the concept of economic space is vital and thus needed to reform orthodox price theory. It negates the classical paradigm of perfect competition and calls for a spatial price theory of imperfect competition. Among Hiroshi Ohta's findings in spatial microeconomic theory are that unlimited entry of new firms into the market may not lower consumer prices and that increased labor productivity in a spatial economy may actually lower real wages. Researchers and students of economic geography and regional science and economics will find the author's careful analysis, equations, and illustrations valuable in understanding a decade of advances in spatial price theory and in exploring new theories of competition.

Provides a rigorous treatment of some of the basic tools of economic modeling and reasoning, along with an assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of these tools.

David M. Kreps has developed a text in microeconomics that is both challenging and "user-friendly." The work is designed for the first-year graduate microeconomic theory course and is accessible to advanced undergraduates as well. Placing unusual emphasis on modern noncooperative game theory, it provides the student and instructor with a unified treatment of modern microeconomic theory--one that stresses the behavior of the individual actor (consumer or firm) in various institutional settings. The author has taken special pains to explore the fundamental assumptions of the theories and techniques studied, pointing out both strengths and weaknesses. The book begins with an exposition of the standard models of choice and the market, with extra attention paid to choice under uncertainty and dynamic choice. General and partial equilibrium approaches are blended, so that the student sees these approaches as points along a continuum. The work then turns to more modern developments. Readers are introduced to noncooperative game theory and shown how to model games and determine solution concepts. Models with incomplete information, the folk theorem and reputation, and bilateral bargaining are covered in depth. Information economics is explored next. A closing discussion concerns firms as organizations and gives readers a taste of transaction-cost economics.

An introduction to advanced topics in microeconomics that emphasizes the intuition behind assumptions and results, providing examples that show how to apply theory to practice. This textbook offers an introduction to advanced microeconomic theory that emphasizes the intuition behind mathematical assumptions, providing step-by-step examples that show how to apply theoretical models. It covers standard topics such as preference relations, demand theory and applications, producer theory, choice under uncertainty, partial and general equilibrium, monopoly, game theory and imperfect competition, externalities and public goods, and contract theory; but its intuitive and application-oriented approach provides students with a bridge to more technical topics. The book can be used by advanced undergraduates as well as Masters students in economics, finance, and public policy, and by PhD students in programs with an applied focus. The text connects each topic with recent findings in behavioral and experimental economics, and discusses these results in context, within the appropriate chapter. Step-by-step examples appear immediately after the main theoretical findings, and end-of chapter exercises help students understand how to approach similar exercises on their own. An appendix reviews basic mathematical concepts. A separate workbook, Practice Exercises for Advanced Microeconomic Theory, offers solutions to selected problems with detailed explanations. The textbook and workbook together help students improve both their theoretical and practical preparation in advanced microeconomics.

Orthodox economics operates within a hypothesized world of perfect competition in which perfect consumers and firms act to bring about supposedly optimal outcomes. The discrepancies between this model and the reality it claims to address are then attributed to particular imperfections in reality itself. Most heterodox economists seize on this fact and insist that the world is characterized by imperfect competition. But this only ties them to the notion of perfect competition, which remains as their point of departure and base of comparison. There is no imperfection without perfection. In Capitalism, Anwar Shaikh takes a different approach. He demonstrates that most of the central propositions of economic analysis can be derived without any reference to standard devices such as hyperrationality, optimization, perfect competition, perfect information, representative agents, or so-called rational expectations. This perspective allows him to look afresh at virtually all the elements of economic analysis: the laws of demand and supply, the determination of wage and profit rates, technological change, relative prices, interest rates, bond and equity prices, exchange rates, terms and balance of trade, growth, unemployment, inflation, and long booms culminating in recurrent general crises. In every case, Shaikh's innovative theory is applied to modern empirical patterns and contrasted with neoclassical, Keynesian, and Post-Keynesian approaches to the same issues. Shaikh's object of analysis is the economics of capitalism, and he explores the subject in this expansive light. This is how the classical economists, as well as Keynes and Kalecki, approached the issue. Anyone interested in capitalism and economics in general can gain a wealth of knowledge from this ground-breaking text.

This new approach to traditional price theory and to the analysis of imperfect competition represents a breakthrough in the development of a "new" microeconomic theory. Addresses issues in price theory, industrial organization, international trade and regional urban economics.