Book Excerpts:

This textbook is based on an extended collection of handouts distributed to the graduate students in economics attending summer mathematics class at the Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education (CERGE) at Charles University in Prague.

There are two considerations needed to be taken in reading this book. First, this is a short textbook, which could be covered in the course of two months and which, in turn, covers the most significant issues of mathematical economics. This book attempts to maintain a balance between being overly detailed and overly schematic. Therefore this text should resemble (in the "ideological" sense) a "hybrid" of Chiang's classic textbook Fundamental Methods of Mathematical Economics and the comprehensive reference manual by Berck and Sydsaeter.

Second, this text provides the students with simple "cookbook" recipes for solving problems they might face in their studies of economics. Since the target audience was supposed to have some mathematical background (admittance to the program requires at least BA level mathematics), the main goal was to refresh students' knowledge of mathematics rather than teach them math "from scratch". Students were expected to be familiar with the basics of set theory, the real-number system, the concept of a function, polynomial, rational, exponential and logarithmic functions, inequalities and absolute values.