A Course in Microeconomic Theory

Kreps is different from the usual graduate-level Economics textbooks. There is no orderly march of 'lemmas', 'propositions' and 'theorems' supported by stern proofs. Instead you have examples that are taken apart to help build your intuition of how Microeconomics works, arguments that make you aware of the limitations of the standard models. But the story-telling is not at the cost of precision. Enough details and references are provided for the mathematically-inclined reader to build or find proofs. While all the standard micro topics are covered, the five chapters on game theory are truly exceptional in conveying the logic of the many equilibrium concepts of classical game theory and their relevance to economics. The treatment of choice theory is also much more careful than in many other books. These chapters set the stage for the detailed treatments in Notes On The Theory Of Choice (Underground Classics in Economics) and Game Theory and Economic Modelling (Clarendon Lectures in Economics). Comparison to MWG? MWG's style is the no-nonsense official style. If you want to efficiently learn the 'official version' of things for that exam you have coming up then MWG is the book to go to. MWG also has more exercises and it covers much more material than Kreps. Its treatment of general equilibrium theory is much superior. So if you can read only one book in graduate micro, I would recommend MWG. But if your purpose is to learn how to think about microeconomics, you cannot do without reading Kreps.

The quality of the text is very uneven. The foundations of choice theory and game theory are presented with great clarity and insight. This would have been enough to get five stars. Alas, the author yielded to the temptation of trying to make it a comprehensive first-year microeconomics text (instead of a complement to, say, Varian's Microeconomic Analysis). The parts on traditional topics like cost and demand functions, partial and general equilibrium have all the flavor of an after-thought addendum. That lost it one of my stars.