During the Fall 2023 term, MFE I is coordinated by Prof. Raoul Normand (rjn5@nyu.edu).
Welcome to Math for Economics I!
This is the first semester of a sequence designed to give you the intuition to think about economic ideas in mathematical terms, and interpret mathematical concepts in the context of economics. Your understanding of economics and mathematics both will improve after this sequence.
Mathematics is increasingly important in terms of the expression and communication of ideas in economics. A thorough knowledge of mathematics is indispensable for understanding almost all fields of economics, including both applied and theoretical fields. In particular, understanding of elements of calculus and linear algebra are crucial to the study of economics, and this class is designed to provide such appropriate mathematical tools. The formal derivations of the mathematical concepts needed will be the heart of this class. Economic models can often be easily and precisely described in terms of mathematical notation, when words and graphs would fail or mislead us. Therefore, as applications of the mathematical concepts covered in class, examples and motivation will be drawn from important topics in economics.
Some key topics, roughly in order of their appearance in the course, include:
- notion of functions, classical functions;
- limits and continuity;
- derivatives and their interpretation; differentiation rules;
- exponential functions, inverse functions, logarithmic functions, and their derivatives;
- linear approximation, differentials, elasticity;
- local and global extrema, higher-order derivatives, and convexity;
- function of several variables, partial derivatives;
- optimization for functions of several variables.