Courses
The micro theory faculty
teach the core (required) Ph.D. courses 210, 200, and 201. They
also offer a two-semester game theory sequence, 221 and 225, and an
industrial organization course, 248.
UNC Faculty
Gary
Biglaiser (UC San Diego 1988)
Gary
Biglaiser received his B.S. from the University of Arizona and his
Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He has held
visiting positions at Boston University, Indiana University, and the
University of California, Los Angeles. He was also Assistant Chief
Economist at the Federal Communications Commission and has been a
Co-editor of the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy.
Biglaiser's primary research interests are in industrial organization
and regulation. He has also done work in environmental economics
and political economy. He is currently working on optimal regulation
in a dynamic model with technological progress with Michael Riordan
of Columbia University, the economics of access pricing in a network
industry with Patrick DeGraba of the FCC, and multidimensional
competition when adverse selection is present with Albert Ma of Boston
University.
James Friedman
(Yale 1963)
James
Friedman received his B.A. in Economics from the University of Michigan
in 1959 and his Ph. D. in Economics from Yale University in 1963.
From 1963 to 1968 he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale
in both the Economics Department and the Cowles Foundation. From 1968
to 1983 he was Associate Professor and then Professor of Economics at
the University of Rochester as well as Professor of Political Science
there from 1980 to 1983. Then from 1983 to 1985 he was Professor of
Economics at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, from 1985 to 2001,
Kenan Professor of Economics at the University of North Carolina and
is now Kenan Professor Emeritus.
His dissertation and early
research were in experimental economics, but from the late 1960's
onward his research was mainly in game theory and its applications
to oligopoly theory. He has also applied game theory to population
biology and occasionally written on topics outside of game theory.
Several books, "Oligopoly and the Theory of Games" (North Holland
1977), "Oligopoly Theory" (Cambridge 1983), and "Game Theory with
Applications to Economics" (Oxford 1986, 2nd ed 1990) give a good
idea of his research up to the last decade. More recently research
has focused on
such topics as boundedly rational behavior in games, the economics
of middlemen, and equilibrium in oligopoly markets with spatially
differentiated goods.
Alexander Kovalenkov
(Barcelona 1998)
Claudio Mezzetti
(Oxford 1988)
Claudio
Mezzetti, Professor of Economics, is a microeconomic theorist
interested in game theory and its applications to economics and political
science. Mezzetti has held visiting positions at the University of
California at Davis, the Université Catholique de Louvain in
Belgium, and Northwestern University. He received his B.A. in political
science from the University of Pisa in Italy and his D.Phil. in economics
from Oxford University in 1988.
Mezzetti’s current
work is on auction design. In particular he is
interested in the efficiency, revenue extraction and information acquisition
properties of multi-unit auctions when players have multi-dimensional
signals. He is also studying dynamic auctions and the dynamic properties
of learning processes in games played by boundedly rational players.
Sergio
Parreiras (Pennsylvania, 2001)
John
Stewart (Wisconsin, 1976)
Helen
Tauchen (Minnesota, 1977)
Helen
Tauchen is an applied microeconomist. Her research interests
include location, transportation, and regulation. Recently, much
of her work has been on the economics of crime including classical general
deterrence effects and domestic violence. Two of her current research
projects include a study of the effects of involuntary employment on
criminal behavior and the estimation of hedonic models of housing prices.
Research Interests
The UNC faculty in microeconomic
theory have research interests and publications in 1) game theory
including repeated games, bounded rationality, refinements, evolutionary
games, mechanism design, auction theory, principal-agent models, and
information economics; 2) theoretical industrial organization including
regulation, oligopoly pricing and advertising, and middleman behavior;
3) general equilibrium.
Recent Graduates in
Microeconomic Theory
Scott Baker (now
on the faculty at UNC Law School)
George Waters (visiting
professor at Washington and Lee University)
Other Triangle Microeconomists
James Anton, Fuqua School
of Business, Duke University
Gopal Das Varma,
Fuqua School of Business,
Duke University
Tracy Lewis, Fuqua School
of Business, Duke University
Giuseppe Lopomo, Fuqua
School of Business, Duke University
Leslie Marx, Fuqua
School of Business, Duke University
Sergei Severinov, Fuqua
School of Business, Duke University
Curtis Taylor, Department
of Economics, Duke University
Nikolaos Vettas, Fuqua
School of Business, Duke University
Huseyin Yildirim, Department
of Economics, Duke University
Other Activities
The UNC Department of
Economics jointly sponsors the UNC-Duke Microtheory Workshop with
the Department of Economics and The Fuqua School at Duke. Outstanding
researchers from around the world, as well as economists in the Triangle,
present their current research in the weekly workshop.
