The Economic Theory group joins together researchers who use rigorous theoretical analysis to make significant contributions in all areas of economics.
We consider formal models of economies or economic problems. Naturally these formal models are stylized pictures of what we want to study. One major advantage of models is that they help to organize and structure thoughts about economies and economic problems and to point out important aspects of what is studied.
Typically economic models are based on explicit modelling of individual economic agents such as consumers, firms, financial institutions, organizations, public sector etc. On the one hand agents face some constraints dictated by their economic environment, possible income, credit worthiness, technology or something else. On the other hand agents have aspirations, consumers could be concerned about their welfare, firms about shareholders etc. By combining constraints and aspirations we have theories of economic behaviour. Now by having several agents interacting we have a model. Both because models easily becomes overwhelmingly complex and because there are different approaches to how agents are modelled, there is no universal economic model. Therefore models are usually designed with their use in mind modelling some aspects in more detail and others in less detail.
Our interests cover a wide range of areas in economics. Among others behavioural economics, decision theory, dynamic macroeconomics, economics of information, financial economics, game theory (cooperative and non-cooperative), general equilibrium, network economics, resource economics and social choice.
Group members have published in a wide range of top Economics journals such as American Economic Review, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Monetary Economics, European Economic Review, Economic Theory, Games and Economic Behaviour, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Economics Behaviour & Organization.