Postgraduate - UnitECC5850 - Mathematical economic theory

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 2, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Organisational Unit	Department of Economics
Offered	Clayton First semester 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)	Dr Birendra Rai

Synopsis

This unit will primarily focus on explaining the structure of mathematics used in economics. It will start with an introduction to axiomatic set theory and highlight that almost all mathematical concepts of interest to economists can be thought of assets or subsets of suitably defined sets. The three main mathematical structured sets to be covered will be sets with an order structure, topological structure, and linear structure. The six main topics will be Set Theory, Metric and Topological Spaces, Properties of Functions and Correspondences, Linear and Normed Linear Spaces, Fixed Point and Separating Hyperplane Theorems, and a brief introduction to Static and Dynamic Optimization.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

understand the basic structure of mathematics that is used by economists
gain an in-depth knowledge of Order Structure, Topological Structure, and Linear Structure
master the notion of functions and correspondences along with their key properties
understand fixed point theorems, separating hyperplane theorems, and the different types of static and dynamic optimisation problems
develop the ability to read technical articles on one's own.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 40%
Examination: 60%

Chief examiner(s)

Dr Birendra Rai

Workload requirements

3 hours per week