EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Partial differential equations arising from economic theory
Speaker: Professor Ivar Ekeland
Speaker Info: University of Paris-Dauphine
Brief Description:
Special Note:
Abstract:

Standard economic theory holds individual consumers to be utility maximizers. Is this indeed the case, or is it just a theory without empirical content or support? The answer to this simple question leads us very quickly into the realm of nonlinear systems of partial differential equations, and the theory of exterior differential systems, developed by Elie Cartan at the turn of the century for the needs of geometry, turns out to be the tool we need to solve them.