Review of “Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis” by Knut Sydsæter and Peter Hammond.
New students of economics often wonder what kind of books they should read and there are many excellent economics books out there, but often these are not recognized, especially in the USA, because many professors and economics departments look for the deals from the publishers instead of the contents of the books. It is especially difficult to find mathematics books that would concentrate around your major.
When I was still attending the university I wanted to take a course that was based on the textbook “Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis” by Knut Sydsæter and Peter Hammond, but my undergraduate advisor told me that it would be a waist of time, especially after passing calculus and linear algebra classes; therefore, I picked the labor economics course instead. It often happens that after you have selected economics as your major and passed through all those heavy calculus classes, you are still wondering how exactly was all that relevant to economics, besides learning how to differentiate and integrate. The problem is that calculus classes are regularly geared toward engineering or science majors and other students have to conduct their own research for finding the applications relevant to their major. This is one of the main reasons why Knut Sydsæter and Peter Hammond wrote the book – to give economic students better understanding of how mathematics is applied in their major, since they realized that students often are unaccustomed to seeing calculus applied to economic problems. Hence, if you wish to understand mathematics from the economics point of view and get familiar with the mathematical tools used in economic literature, I would highly recommend you to take a look at this book.
Since I could not learn from that textbook while attending the university, I decided to pick it up after my graduation. It has taken me several months to complete because, besides reading the textbook, I also wished to work through most of its exercises. If you are serious about understanding the subjects a bit better, I would suggest you to do the exercises too because sometimes they can lead you to a different approach or realization of the topic.
The book starts out with very elementary math, but you might even learn some tricks from there, which progresses through chapters. The authors have made a point to demonstrate with every subject how it is valid or applied in economics. The best treats of the book are the paragraphs that are meant for the more ambitious students and therefore put in smaller print, as those often provide explanations of certain techniques or proofs. It has a thorough presentation of Lagrange multiplier method, the whole chapter of constrained optimization is dedicated for it. The book also introduces several theories and subjects that you might have not learned in transcendental calculus but are considered as necessary tools for better understanding of economic literature; like Young’s theorem, Euler’s theorem, Kuhn-Tucker conditions, Ck function, Hessian matrix, Comparative statics, Nonlinear programming, etc. In the end of the chapters it frequently walks you through a general case and economic applications of that same subject that it has previously presented. I believe that this book should be a mandatory reading for the students of economics and if your university thinks otherwise then you should definitely spend some time glancing through it yourself. One thing is sure, the next time you gaze at somebody’s academic paper in economics; you will not be as much overwhelmed by the mathematical terms as you would have been otherwise and the text might even make more sense to you.If you have questions about the book or its exercises, you are welcome to leave them here.
When I was still attending the university I wanted to take a course that was based on the textbook “Essential Mathematics for Economic Analysis” by Knut Sydsæter and Peter Hammond, but my undergraduate advisor told me that it would be a waist of time, especially after passing calculus and linear algebra classes; therefore, I picked the labor economics course instead. It often happens that after you have selected economics as your major and passed through all those heavy calculus classes, you are still wondering how exactly was all that relevant to economics, besides learning how to differentiate and integrate. The problem is that calculus classes are regularly geared toward engineering or science majors and other students have to conduct their own research for finding the applications relevant to their major. This is one of the main reasons why Knut Sydsæter and Peter Hammond wrote the book – to give economic students better understanding of how mathematics is applied in their major, since they realized that students often are unaccustomed to seeing calculus applied to economic problems. Hence, if you wish to understand mathematics from the economics point of view and get familiar with the mathematical tools used in economic literature, I would highly recommend you to take a look at this book.
Since I could not learn from that textbook while attending the university, I decided to pick it up after my graduation. It has taken me several months to complete because, besides reading the textbook, I also wished to work through most of its exercises. If you are serious about understanding the subjects a bit better, I would suggest you to do the exercises too because sometimes they can lead you to a different approach or realization of the topic.
The book starts out with very elementary math, but you might even learn some tricks from there, which progresses through chapters. The authors have made a point to demonstrate with every subject how it is valid or applied in economics. The best treats of the book are the paragraphs that are meant for the more ambitious students and therefore put in smaller print, as those often provide explanations of certain techniques or proofs. It has a thorough presentation of Lagrange multiplier method, the whole chapter of constrained optimization is dedicated for it. The book also introduces several theories and subjects that you might have not learned in transcendental calculus but are considered as necessary tools for better understanding of economic literature; like Young’s theorem, Euler’s theorem, Kuhn-Tucker conditions, Ck function, Hessian matrix, Comparative statics, Nonlinear programming, etc. In the end of the chapters it frequently walks you through a general case and economic applications of that same subject that it has previously presented. I believe that this book should be a mandatory reading for the students of economics and if your university thinks otherwise then you should definitely spend some time glancing through it yourself. One thing is sure, the next time you gaze at somebody’s academic paper in economics; you will not be as much overwhelmed by the mathematical terms as you would have been otherwise and the text might even make more sense to you.If you have questions about the book or its exercises, you are welcome to leave them here.
Häly Laasme
posted by Häly Laasme at 3:52 PM
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