Now that the semester is over and I’ve barely scratched my way through, I’m going to point out some helpful books that other may find useful. I suggest reading these *before* you start an economics PhD program and doing the exercises in the books.

Mathematics for Economists by C. Simon. This was by far, the most useful book available. It provided excellent summaries and explanations for tough topics, such as convexity/concavity, quasi convexity, homogeneity, and linear algebra. It provides some in depth coverage of calculus techniques but I found those to be rather unhelpful. The calculus in the Yamane book below was much better. It’s kind of an expensive book, so I recommend getting this in advance from the library.

A First Course in Optimization Theory by R. Sundaram. This is a tremendously well-written book. In fact, for a tough topic, like optimization theory Sundaram does a really great job. He covers Lagrange, Kuhn-Tucker, Supermodularity, and basic convex optimization. This is stuff that comes up repeatedly in intro PhD micro, so it’s mandatory reading.

Mathematics for Economists by T. Yamane. I got this book from the library because it looked helpful and it is a very helpful book, especially the coverage of calculus. The chapters on differentiation and integration are the highlight of the book. The only problem is that because this book is old, it’s a little bit *too easy*. However, you should go through this book, as a refresher before going onto the Simon or Sundaram texts.

Principals of Mathematical Analysis by W. Rudin. Everyone in economics talks about this book like it is the most helpful book ever written. I found this book to be “ok”. It does provide sufficient coverage of real analysis but goes way to fast and the exercises are not great.  Of course, I’m in the minority on this. Either way, the book is pretty cheap, so you should at least add it to your bookshelf.