First Assignment and Summer Review
1. Unlike your other economic courses, ECON 526 will run for 9 weeks and end earlier than the scheduled last day of classes (we will have our final exam on the 10th week of classes). This is in order to give you a chance to concentrate on the other core topics in economics. Due to the quick “refresher” nature of this course, it is crucial that you have some working knowledge of basic mathematics, such as linear algebra and calculus. Before the first class, please read parts (a), (b), and (c) of the following notes. When you read these notes, don’t skim them. Please read them with a pen and paper and work out examples by yourself.
(a) Logic and proofs. logic
(b) Elementary calculus: lec_b_1, lec_b_2, lec_b_3
(c) Elementary matrix algebra: lec_c_1, lec_c_2, lec_c_3
(d) Unconstrained optimization: lec_d_1, lec_d_2, lec_d_3, lec_d_4, lec_d_5
2. Please complete the exercises and problems for parts (a), (b), and (c) as well. We will consider this as your first assignment (due at 11:59pm on Wednesday, September 7 – the first ECON 526 class). Please submit your scanned handwritten answers to the course webpage on Canvas once you have access to Canvas. You should also read part (d), but you need not hand in the exercises. No need to hand in unnumbered “Question”.
Course Materials
The first half of the courses will be based on the following lecture notes:
optimization-526 optimalControl-526 dynamicProgramming-526
The second half will be based on the following lecture notes (subject to time constraints):
sets-526 metricSpaces-526 dcalc-notes functions-notes implicit-notes matrixAlgebra systemsOfLinearEquations