General Equilibrium and Game Theory: Ten Papers

by Andreu Mas-Colell, Hugo F Sonnenschein (Introduction), Antoni Bosch-Domenech (Appendix)

Andreu Mas-Colell revolutionized our understanding of competitive markets, price formation, and the behavior of market participants. General Equilibrium and Game Theory offers readers a compendium of his most important scholarly contributions, gathering in a single volume the groundbreaking papers that have solidified his standing as one of the preeminent economic theorists of our time.

Built upon the foundations of neoclassical economics, Mas-Colell’s work is distinguished by a mathematical and analytical elegance that brings theory closer to real-world situations. He overturns the standard assumption of general equilibrium theory―that markets are perfectly competitive and their participants are perfectly rational―and concludes that neither the law of supply and demand nor the existence of equilibrium prices depends on the rationality of agents. Similarly, Mas-Colell (working with Sergiu Hart) challenges classical game theory’s reliance on rational behavior, demonstrating that adaptation and learning shape the dynamics of repeated games.

Addressing central questions of finance, trade, industrial organization, and welfare economics, Mas-Colell shows the surprising power and versatility of differentiability and linear-space mathematical techniques, and he emphasizes the fruitfulness of cooperative game-theory approaches, such as Shapley value theory and the Bargaining Set, for understanding competition and distribution. General Equilibrium and Game Theory is a signal contribution to economic theory and an invaluable resource for anyone wishing to study the craft of a master of economic modeling.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published January 4, 2016

About the author

(form personal webpage)

Andreu Mas-Colell is Professor of Economics (Catedrático) at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain (currently on leave). Formerly he was Professor of Economics at Harvard University (1981-96), Professor of Economics and Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley (1972-80) and Chairman of the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics (2006-2010). He holds Honoris Causa Doctorates from the universities of Alacant, Toulouse, HEC (Paris) and Universidad Nacional del Sur (Argentina). He has received the Rey Juan Carlos I Prize in Economics (1988), the Pascual Madoz (National Research Prize), (2006) and the Premio Fundación BBVA Fronteras del Conocimiento en Economía, Finanzas y Gestión de Empresas -shared with H. Sonnenschein- (2009). He has served as main Editor of the Journal of Mathematical Economics (1985-88), and of Econometrica (1988-92).

Professor Mas-Colell is a Fellow of the Econometric Society and was its President in 1993. In 1997 he was elected Foreign Associate to the US National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. He has been a Sloan Fellow (1978-1980) and Guggenheim Fellow (1985-1986). Also from 1999 to 2005 he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Economic Association. In the year 2006 he served as President of the European Economic Association. From 2000 to 2003 he was Minister for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia and President of the Advisory Scientific Committee of Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo (2005-2008). He has been General Secretary of the European Research Council from July 2009 to August 2010. At present he is Minister of Economy and Knowledge of the Government of Catalonia (from December 2010).

A. Mas-Colell has written some 100 research papers on subjects ranging from abstract general equilibrium theory and the structure of financial markets to pricing policy for public firms. He is the author of The Theory of General Economic Equilibrium: A Differentiable Approach (Cambridge University Press, 1985) and co-author with M. Whinston and J. Green, of the graduate textbook Microeconomic Theory (Oxford University Press, 1994).