General Equilibrium, Overlapping Generations Models, and Optimal Growth Theory

This book is a competent textbook on the basics of General Equilibrium and Overlapping Generations models. It is adequate for graduate and undergraduate students of economics. But is it simply put, boring and takes too much time and examples to teach GE theory. There are shorter and better books out there, like the Mas-Colell's microeconomics textbook. So, I don't recommend this book for students looking to learn GE theory.

I had a horrible experience attempting to learn general equilibrium. My professor wasn't the best, however this book might have made things worse. The notation is confusing and changes throughout the book. Explanations are subpar. A lot of the examples he does visually using Edgeworth boxes rather than showing the real math to solving the problem. So then when you get to a more complicated problem that can't be solved by Edgeworth boxes alone, it's difficult to figure because you can't extrapolate from the previous simple cases. I really disliked this book and sadly I still don't understand general equilibrium theory.

This book is relevant for the actual society, because it represents the sense of general equilibrium, what it depends by the markets and the individual preference of client. The explication is particullary simple and I don't have the difficulties existent in other texts.

There are an absurd number of typos, so much so that parts of the book are unreadable because equations have been written incorrectly. As an example, see page 261 condition 1. First, the vector expansion of x-hat gives all subscripts as 1 instead of the subscripts going from 1 to I. Second, the ' is not superscripted, and worst of all the feasibility condition is written completely incomprehensibly: instead of giving the sum of the x-bars across i is less than or equal to the sum of endowments across i, it simply gives the sum of the x-bars(with their subscripts missing) times the endowments across i, with no inequality whatsoever. As icing on the cake it's written in the first person (why?) and the diction is terrible. As to the actual material, I thankfully didn't have to read the whole thing, but what I did read (Ch 7), was serviceable but long-winded.

He gives very clear and intuitive explanations of concepts that can sometimes be hard to grasp in purely abstract terms. Yes, the chapters on general equilibrium do take longer to read than those of MWG, but he covers everything very thoroughly and doesn't skip steps in his proofs. I guarantee that you'll view the material you've already learned differently if you take the time to read Bewley's book.