William David Anthony Bryant – författare

People pursue their own interests, whatever those interests might be. Some people have interests that are narrow and selfish, while others have interests that are broad and altruistic. The idea that people are self-interested underpins all of economic analysis and raises two fundamental questions: 1. How do people choose the actions they think will further their own interests? 2. Can the potentially conflicting interests of different people be made to 'mesh' in some sort of socio-economic equilibrium? This book is devoted to a detailed study of the first question. Its Companion Volume (Economy-Wide Microeconomics: Equilibrium, Optimality, Applications and Tests) makes a detailed study of the second question.Following some foundational remarks, this book studies the Arrow-Debreu theory of consumer choice. That theory supposes people choose so as to maximize a complete, continuous, transitive, and reflexive binary preference relation over a non-empty and compact choice set. The book then studies numerous refinements, generalizations and extensions of each of these restrictions — up to and including recent work on Behavioral theories of choice and choice behaviour when preferences are intransitive/incomplete/discontinuous. Also considered is choice behaviour in environments that are not necessarily compact. A study is also made of intertemporal choice and choice under uncertainty. The study of Arrow-Debreu choice theory and its extensions are presented from the Primal, Dual, and Revealed Preference points of view.Consumers are not the only agents in the economy, as Producers are present as well. Beginning with a study of the Arrow-Debreu idea that producers choose from a convex production set so as to maximize profit, the book considers extensions and generalizations of this framework, particularly to non-convex environments. The study is presented from the Primal and Dual points of view.The final chapter in the book provides a link to its Companion Volume. The Chapter indicates how the theories of consumer and producer choice studied here help inform answers of the second question posed above.Resources are available to instructors who adopt this book. More details at www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/12789-sm

This book attempts to understand the operation and properties of 'market economies'. We do this by carefully examining, refining and in some cases extending the major theorems that Microeconomics has established in response to the Walrasian conjecture. We critically evaluate theorems and results, that assert the existence, uniqueness, stability, optimality and empirical relevance of Walrasian equilibrium states. As a result of our work, we attempt to comment on the wisdom of recommending that socio-economic systems operate as a collection of deregulated competitive markets.

This book attempts to understand the operation and properties of 'market economies'. We do this by carefully examining, refining and in some cases extending the major theorems that Microeconomics has established in response to the Walrasian conjecture. We critically evaluate theorems and results, that assert the existence, uniqueness, stability, optimality and empirical relevance of Walrasian equilibrium states. As a result of our work, we attempt to comment on the wisdom of recommending that socio-economic systems operate as a collection of deregulated competitive markets.

General Equilibrium Theory studies the properties and operation of free market economies. The field is a response to a series of questions originally outlined by Leon Walras about the operation of markets and posed by Frank Hahn in the following way: ‘Does the pursuit of private interest, through a system of interconnected deregulated markets, lead not to chaos but to coherence — and if so, how is that achieved?’ This is always an apt question, but particularly so given the ‘Global Financial Crisis’ that emerged from the operation of market economies in the Americas and Europe in mid to late 2008.The answer that General Equilibrium Theory provides to the Walras-Hahn question is that, under certain conditions coherence is possible, while under certain other conditions chaos, in various forms, is likely to prevail. The conditionality of either outcome is not always well understood — neither by proponents of, or antagonists to, the ‘free market position’. Consequently, this book attempts to show something of what General Equilibrium Theory has to say about the wisdom or otherwise of always relying on ‘market forces’ to manage complex socio-economic systems.

This four-volume Handbook of Economy-wide Microeconomics is presented in a comprehensive, up-to-date and accessible manner. The Handbook guides the reader through the major features of Economy-wide Microeconomics, starting with a detailed description of the classic Arrow-Debreu model of the economy and concluding with a discussion of research aimed at relaxing various Arrow-Debreu conditions. The layout of the Handbook covers the following themes: existence of equilibrium, uniqueness of equilibrium, stability of equilibrium, optimality of equilibrium allocations, comparative statics of equilibrium states and empirical testing for equilibrium states. Each of these themes is explored in competitive, Walrasian and non-competitive environments.Most 'applied economics' — beyond simple partial equilibrium exercises that ignore important feedback loops across the economy — falls under the umbrella of Economy-wide Microeconomics. One therefore has to be selective in the applications considered here. Those applications include: optimal responses to climate change; the gains from international trade; Pareto improving piecemeal reforms; gains from international migration; managing global financial crises; a Tobin tax; the economics of global pandemics; and the welfare properties of imperfect competition.Exercises are placed throughout the Handbook, with references to places in the literature where complete solutions to them may be found. This is done in order to build the reader's experience of the research literature as a vast and wonderful resource. The author is grateful to Honours, Master's and PhD students at Macquarie University and The University of Sydney whose reactions, comments and observations about the material in this Handbook have been immensely beneficial.