Customer Reviews

Schaum's Outline Introduction to Mathematical Economics

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4 star:		(3)
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This is an excellent book for non-quant jockeys who want to brush up on their mathematical skills for upper-level or graduate-level econ courses. The best strength of the book is its organization. After a chapter on introduction and discussion of a mathematical technique or theory, a chapter on the technique's application is presented. This is an excellent way to not only reinforce the material but demonstrate its applications and relavence to economics.

However, several caveats should be noted:

First, I believe that the ideal reader should already have some exposure to calculus. For instance, Dowling discusses the fundamentals of differentiation in about 26 pages, which is far too little if one is learning calculus from scratch. If the reader already has some exposure to calculus (as I did), then Dowling's chapters on differentiation and integration could be used as review.

Second, the learning curve really steepens in the latter chapters when Dowling discusses differential equations as he appears to sacrifice detailed explanations for brevity.

Lastly, I think the reader would be best served to use this book as a resource and not just as the main text. Mathematical Economics is a very broad and challenging subject, and as good as this book is, it only scratches the surface of a complex topic. I would also recommend "Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics" by Alpha Chiang.

Highly recommended.

I teach math for economists to undergraduates and Ph.D. and Masters students. I and my students agree, this book is great. It isn't a math textbook -- you will still need a good one of those (I am currently recommending Michael Klein's book for undergrads and the text by Simon and Blume for grad students.) But the book is more than a list of problems. The problems are written and organized to build up your understanding of the math. I like this book much better than most of the other Schaum's outline books; it doesn't drown you in detail, but helps you move through the structure of the math.

This helps beginning PhD econ students (and other PhD students taking econ PhD core courses) to get to the important points fast. With a lot of exercises, it also drives the point home quick.

If you are one like me who gets frustrated with a lot of blah blah from textbooks like Simon and Blume, as well as the terse/succinct textbook like Varian's Microeconomics analysis, this is a great buy. This book is direct to the point, and very student friendly.

This is an excellent book. I would recommend it for anyone wishing to learn mathematical economics. It is equally beneficial to college students, who can use this book as a supplement to their textbook, and to those who want to use this book for self-study. For anyone who is weak in mathematical knowledge, the author presents the necessary mathematical skills needed to understand how to work the problems. As the author states: "No mathematical proficiency beyond the high school level is assumed at the start." All the required concepts are clearly explained.

The problems range from the easier to the more challenging ones. For example, some of the chapters include doing proofs, although these are limited to a minimum. In fact, only the chapter on "Simultaneous Differential and Difference Equations," out of all the chapters, contains a greater proportion of problems dealing with proofs - a little less than one-half of the total problems at the end of this chapter involve proofs.

This 3rd edition excludes three chapters on linear programming which were included in the 2nd edition. However, three other chapters were added instead: comparative statics and concave programming, simultaneous differential and difference equations, and optimal control theory.

I believe the author has done a very good job in presenting a difficult subject in an understandable manner.

This is a very useful book for undergrad and graduate students in the fields of Economics and Business. For each topic, the author presents the basics of theory and then proposes several different exercises. The solutions are shown in detail which clearly helps the reader in terms of understanding the path and the reasoning behind a specific solution.

The book can be divided into six parts:
I - Introduction: chapters 1 and 2. In here the author discusses the basics you are going to need across the entire book: simultaneous equations, functions, polynomials, linear and quadratic equations.

II - Differentiation: Chapters 3 to 9. Differentiation is the key issue in this set of chapters: it is important to stress that the author included multivariable analysis (Lagrange Multipliers for instance) which adds a desirable complexity to the issues that are under discussion;

III - Linear Algebra: chapters 10 to 13. In this part, the author presents the most relevant topics in this field such as matrix inversion, determinants, eigen values and concave programming;

IV - Integration: chapters 14 and 15. The author provides a good explanation of the main integration techniques and he analyses the indefinite and the definite integral and its aplications;

V - Differential Equations and Difference Equations: chapters 16 to 19. This part includes first-order differential and difference equations, second-order differential and difference equations and simultaneous differential and difference equations. This part and the next can be consider as the most challenging issues in the entire book. I consider that as long as the reader was able to follow the reasoning and the methodologies that were used in the previous parts, these last chapters will be a very interesting challenge.

VI - Dynamic Optimization: chapters 20 and 21. The book ends with calculus of variations and otimal control theory.

As a Professor of Mathematics for Social Sciences I believe this is one of the best books available. Probably it will be important to have another book, like, for instance, Chiang, as a theoretical complement. But this book can really gets you into the wonders and logic of mathematical reasoning and mathematical tools.

As an undergraduate student studying economics and econometrics I recommend this book as the best book to have in amongst your study books!

If you don't like or understand a lot of the garbled mathematical explanations (especially in microeconomic texts) then this book is your friend ... hundreds of easy to understand examples and worked problems will get you through whatever paper/course you are studying.

For someone who just wants to increae their understanding of mathematical equations and definitions, then this is the book for you also.

Thanks for this book Dr Dowling, it has sure made my life easier ... especially when I was learning new principles at the 100 level (base level).

Definitely worth buying! Kristina

This book is excellent, soooo much better than the text required by my instructor, Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics by Alpha C. Chiang. I learned infinitely more studying from this book than I did going to lectures and doing homework from the other text. It focuses on calculations, problem solving, and economic applications, not mathematic theory. After all, I am studying to be an economist, not a mathematician.

Awesome, awesome, awesome!!!

I used this text to prepare for my business PhD program (which requires PhD level micro and stats). I'd never taken calculus or linear algebra, so I was pretty nervous about the quant aspects of the program. I bought this book about six months before school started and went through chapter-by-chapter, and I couldn't be happier with the results. Thanks to the great explanations and huge amount of practice problems, I was able to master all of the topics I needed, and even got the highest grade in our pre-PhD "math for economists" course. This book would be worth 10x its price.

I bought this book as a supplement to my econometrics course. It is fantasic. It had been a few semesters since I'd taken my calculus and statistics courses and this really helped me brush up on the mathematical side of econometrics (pretty much the entire course...) This book was very helpful, to the point where I am now going to purchase 4 more books on various topics for review. This is a great choice and the range of topics covered is most comprehensive.

I was required to get this book a graduate level course, but I recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the mathematical basis for economics. Even the solved problems at the end of each chapter are extremely helpful for explaining the basic concepts. My only criticism is that all problems sets to work out on your own are solved directly below each problem. It is can be difficult to keep the eyes from unintentionally sneaking a glance at the solutions; difficult, but not impossible.