Elements of Numerical Mathematical Economics with Excel

5.3. Some economic applications of the nonlinear unconstrained optimization

There is a vast range of applications of the unconstrained (and constrained optimization) in the economic areas: from the pure consumer and firm optimization problems in microeconomics to the managerial problems of production optimization.

While Chapter 6 is entirely dedicated to the core concepts of microeconomics, whose problems are essentially solved resorting to the constrained optimization, the following two examples will present two typical unconstrained optimization production problems. This class of applied optimization problems to managerial sciences is also studied by the operations research.

Figure 5.2-12 Solver setup for local minimum.