Elements of Mathematics for Economics and Finance

Mathematics is an extremely important subject for economics. Areas such as linear equations, optimization, and regression techniques (both linear and nonlinear) play a major part in economic modeling. However, such topics are usually not covered in books of this nature.

As the title suggests, this book in every way provides the elements of mathematics to be used in economics and finance. Topics are presented in a very introductory manner. It seems as if it is even more approachable than some first semester calculus text. Only the most important concepts are explained, which is the main focus of the book. The examples provided are the very simple and they all relate, naturally, to economics or finance. The presentation of examples is extremely detailed, something like a step-by-step analysis of the solution. The authors do not provide connections economics other than in examples. Rather, the mathematical theory is presented and then is followed by a simple example.

This is a very easy read if you ever had any higher mathematics (say, at the first year undergraduate level), which generally all economics students should have. After you are reminded of the methods you can go on and use some more advanced books on the same subject that will depict real problems encountered when applying mathematical methods in economics and finance.

Ita Cirovic Donev is a PhD candidate at the University of Zagreb. She hold a Masters degree in statistics from Rice University. Her main research areas are in mathematical finance; more precisely, statistical mehods of credit and market risk. Apart from the academic work she does consulting work for financial institutions.