Kreps II: Microeconomic Foundations II: Imperfect Competition, Information, and Strategic Interaction (coming soon)

 Princeton University Press announces:

Microeconomic Foundations II: Imperfect Competition, Information, and Strategic Interaction by David M. Kreps

"A cutting-edge introduction to key topics in modern economic theory for first-year graduate students in economics and related fields

"Volume II of Microeconomic Foundations introduces models and methods at the center of modern microeconomic theory. In this textbook, David Kreps, a leading economic theorist, emphasizes foundational material, concentrating on seminal work that provides perspective on how and why the theory developed. Because noncooperative game theory is the chief tool of modeling and analyzing microeconomic phenomena, the book stresses the applications of game theory to economics. And throughout, it underscores why theory is most useful when it supports rather than supplants economic intuition.

• Introduces first-year graduate students to the models and methods at the core of microeconomic theory today
• Covers an extensive range of topics, including the agency theory, market signaling, relational contracting, bilateral bargaining, auctions, matching markets, and mechanism design
• Stresses the use—and misuse—of theory in studying economic phenomena and shows why theory should support, not replace, economic intuition
• Includes extensive appendices reviewing the essential concepts of noncooperative game theory, with guidance about how it should and shouldn’t be used
• Features free online supplements, including chapter outlines and overviews, solutions to all the problems in the book, and more

By email, Kreps writes: "An e-book version will be released on January 3, 2023.  Physical books will only be released in late May (I gather, a bit later in England)"

Bichler on market design: textbook from Cambridge U. Press

Martin Bichler has a new textbook on market design, focused on auctions and linear programming:

Market Design A Linear Programming Approach to Auctions and Matching

• Author: Martin Bichler, Technische Universität München

• Date Published: December 2017 

The Handbook of Experimental Economics, volume 2, edited by John Kagel and Al Roth (forthcoming Sept 27:)

The Handbook of Experimental Economics, Volume 2 Hardcover –  forthcoming, September 27, 2016
by John H. Kagel (Editor), Alvin E. Roth (Editor)

from Princeton University Press
Table of Contents [PDF] 


from Amazon

From the Back Cover

"This new volume of Kagel and Roth's indispensable handbook covers the latest dramatic developments that have led experimental economics into areas such as market design and neuroeconomics, and also offers fresh insights into more traditional areas. It is all here, and all told in a manner both informative and engaging."--Gary Bolton, University of Texas, Dallas
"Kagel and Roth have done it again. While the first volume of the Handbook showed how experimental economics had reached its maturity as a scientific method, this second volume shows just how wide its reach has become, and how deep these tools can take our understanding of economic theory and human behavior. This book will change the way the world views economics."--James Andreoni, University of California, San Diego
"The contributors provide insights that will be invaluable to anyone seeking a deeper understanding of the issues at hand. I know of no other book that covers the same breadth of material in the same way. People will use this as a reference book for many years to come."--Tim Salmon, Southern Methodist University
"A worthy successor to the first volume. This ambitious and well-written book will appeal to a broad economic audience."--Tom Wilkening, University of Melbourne
"I wish every economist and economics graduate student would read this book. Those who are considering running experiments should be forced to; this is a bible in how to run good experiments. Every chapter is amazingly comprehensive and has been written by a true expert in the field. But economists who would never dream about running an experiment can benefit from reading this just as much. The beauty of experiments is that they force theorists to think carefully about their theories."--Richard Thaler, Cornell University
"This Handbook surveys one of the most important developments in economics in the last decade, the flowering of experimental economics. Led by two of the leaders of current economic theory and experimental economics, an impressive group of researchers provides the reader with an excellent up-to-date overview of one of the most fascinating and promising areas of current economic research."--Ariel Rubinstein, Princeton University
"The Handbook is not only a contribution to experimental economics, it is a major contribution to social science. It successfully combines the rigor and clarity of economic analysis with a commitment to open-minded examination of data, and a refreshing willingness to question dogma. Every student of human choice and action will find this text useful."--Daniel Kahneman, The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
"Experimental economics comes of age with this volume. At last the dust begins to clear, and it becomes possible to confront theory with coherent and reliable laboratory data."--Ken Binmore, University College of London

A matching market for used textbooks at Stanford

Here's an attempt to disintermediate bookstores:

Matchbook--The easiest way to buy and sell textbooks and course readers at Stanford

Nick  Arnosti forwarded me this email about it:

"As many of you probably know by now, MS&E (and other departments) course materials like textbooks and course readers can be super expensive to buy from the bookstore and hard to sell outside of Stanford.

Easily find other Stanford students on campus who are buying and selling Stanford course materials by using MatchBook.

www.StanfordMatchBook.com
@stanford.edu email required

Search and add textbooks or course readers by class (e.g. MS&E 240) then easily contact buyers or sellers to meet up on campus

-No spamming email lists/Facebook
-No hassle of shipping through Amazon
-No searching unreliable SUPost listings
-No buying at markup/selling for nothing at bookstore

There are currently 500 Stanford students on MatchBook, 255 books for sale and 304 books on buy lists. There are sellers/buyers for most MS&E and CS classes along with most other departments."

Bargaining, and the law of one price on the internet: Axiomatic Models of Bargaining

Sometimes price variation on the internet is explained by search costs, etc., but below is an example that is hard to explain that way, since all the options are on the same page (e.g. who would rent a book for more than its purchase price?)  The example below is for my book, Axiomatic Models of Bargaining, which is available for free here (although just in pdf, not in the collectors' edition, which you can buy from Springer for $69.95).

Rental market for textbooks

Here's a story about Chegg.com, which rents textbooks: We Rent Movies, So Why Not Textbooks?

"Yet the Craigslist model didn’t work. When classes ended in the spring, sellers couldn’t find many buyers online and sold their used books to the college store, often for pennies on the dollar. By the time students migrated back to campus in the fall, willing online sellers were few and far between. "
...
"With demand for good deals on textbooks running high, Chegg’s success comes in large part from being able to address those inefficiencies. While Chegg primarily rents books, it is also essentially acting as a kind of “market maker,” gathering books from sellers at the end of a semester and renting — or sometimes selling — them to other students at the start of a new one. "

See also http://www.bookrenter.com/, http://www.bookswim.com/, http://www.campusbookrentals.com/...

Market for textbooks

The Washington Post has a story on the educational software company Aplia, founded by Paul Romer: An Economist, an Academic Puzzle and a Lot of Promise. It makes a number of interesting observations about the design of the textbook market, and how interactive software that gives students immediate feedback, and lets them participate in experimental economics style interactions, complements the traditional textbook and lecture style of instruction.

"Students seemed to like Aplia's engaging and easy-to-use software, as well as the feedback. Professors liked Aplia even more. It allowed them to leverage the grade-grubbing instincts of today's college students to get them to do homework -- but without having to spend countless hours reading and correcting the assignments. They also got reports from Aplia identifying which students were having the most trouble with the material and which concepts were stumping the class as a whole. "
...
"By relieving instructors of the considerable burden of reviewing homework assignments, the technology makes it possible for universities to require professors to teach more students, either by increasing class sizes or the number of classes they teach. More important, it frees instructors to spend more time preparing for class, working with individual students and even doing their own research. "

It may also allow publishers to circumvent the secondhand market for textbooks, as the software license can be separated from the book.

HT: Greg Mankiw

Rental market for textbooks

From Peter Klein at Organizations and Markets: Students: Consider Renting, not Buying, Your Books

"Chegg is the Netflix of college textbooks. Get your book in the mail, along with a prepaid return address label, don’t write in it too much, and send it back once the semester is over. I took a quick look and the savings appear to be substantial for brand-new books, modest otherwise (because there are robust secondary markets for used textbooks). The newest edition of a book I assigned last semester is $127 new from Amazon, $72 for a one-semester rental from Chegg."

HT Steve Leider

Market for textbooks

Don’t Buy That Textbook, Download It Free in the NY Times:

"In protest of what he says are textbooks’ intolerably high prices — and the dumbing down of their content to appeal to the widest possible market — Professor McAfee has put his introductory economics textbook online free. ...“This market is not working very well — except for the shareholders in the textbook publishers,” he said. “We have lots of knowledge, but we are not getting it out.”