Hal R. Varian

This is an absolute classic, and 10 years after publication still has relevant and critical information in each chapter. Perhaps a more up-to-date monograph for many topics would be Judo Strategy. However, the topics like Pricing, Standards Wars, Managing Lock-In are so relevant. Put this book together with The Innovator's Dilemma, Judo Strategy, and a few other tomes is enough to arm the new software entrepreneur. On the downside, the book is a little naive at times about the hardcore show more business and competitiveness of software, which is probably due to the authors being academics. An excellent strategy book, readable, and definitely specific to software. show less

The old joke was the "Invariance Principle" - if you needed to know anything crucial in microeconomic theory it was in Varian's text. The only problem was that Varian's exposition is so exact and terse that you needed to learn it elsewhere before you could understand it in Varian. Still a great text though.

I prefer Jehle and Reny. Varian is cool because it's concise and has funny remarks scattered throughout the book. It's written such that you can cross reference his intermediate text if you get lost.

I find the mathematical appendices inadequate. The problem is this: you shouldn't need to use the appendices BUT if you do need to use them, they aren't comprehensive enough to help.

Brilliantly clear on the classic topics like the theory of the firm. Not, perhaps, so wonderful on game theory, mainly because the treatment is relatively superficial (especially compared to, e.g., Kreps). Also, I didn't find it great on the Arrow-DeBreu general equilibrium material, but that could have been because my reading of that material was fast.
Overall, a very nice text for first-semester PhD Micro.