Industrial Organization -M-F-
Kurs ID
ECON503
Art des Kurses
MSc Kurs
Wochenstunden
2,5
ECTS
5
Semester
HS 2021
Vortragssprache
Englisch
Vortragende/r
Juniorprof. Dr. Anna Ressi
Bitte beachten Sie, dass AustauschstudentInnen im BSc-Programm der WHU eine höhere Anzahl an Credits erwerben als hier aufgeführt. Für weitere Informationen wenden Sie sich bitte direkt an das [International Relations Office].
Kursinhalt
The main goal of this course is to provide an introduction to the main concepts and analytical tools of the theory of industrial organization. Industrial organization is a field of microeconomics that studies how firms interact and compete with each other in the market. We will predominantly confront markets characterized by imperfect competition. In these markets, firms can exercise market power and hence need to makestrategicdecisions, i.e. decisions that have an identifiable impact on other market participants. Examples of such strategic choices are price, product variety, investments in advertising, and research and development. The course aims to teach students to use simple game-theoretic models and reasoning, which will crucially improve their understanding of strategic decision-making by firms. We use this analysis to investigate questions such as:
- Why are there so many varieties of chocolate bars?
- Which market characteristics allow and encourage firms to maintain a price-fixing agreement
- How do advertising and product innovation affect the nature of competition?
At the end of the course, students will be able to understand and suggest managerial policies and comment on existing competition laws aimed at improving market allocations.
The course consists of 7 sessions (for details please see the Syllabus) and uses a mixture of lectures, short case studies, and classroom discussions.
Termine
| Date | Time |
|---|---|
| Friday, 03.09.2021 | 13:45 - 17:00 |
| Friday, 10.09.2021 | 15:30 - 18:45 |
| Monday, 13.09.2021 | 08:00 - 11:15 |
| Tuesday, 21.09.2021 | 11:30 - 15:15 |
| Wednesday, 22.09.2021 | 11:30 - 15:15 |
| Friday, 01.10.2021 | 11:30 - 15:15 |
| Wednesday, 06.10.2021 | 15:30 - 18:45 |
| Monday, 11.10.2021 | 08:00 - 09:30 |
| Monday, 18.10.2021 | 09:00 - 10:30 |
Lernerfolge
By the end of the course, students will advance their knowledge in different ways:
Learning the concepts of game theory and applying them to practical economic issues and real-world scenarios will
- help you to understand the basic drivers of strategic behaviour and be helpful for your master thesis.
- improve your critical thinking in other courses.
- teach you to structure a complex problem and reduce it to the important core, which will be useful for your university and business career.
- help you to ask the right questions or detect inconsistencies in discussions, which will improve your communication skills.
Literatur
No textbook isexplicitlyrequired for the course. However, the course and the lecture slides will go relatively close along the lines of Belleflamme, P., & Peitz, M. (2010). Industrial Organization: Markets and Strategies. 2ndedition. Cambridge University Press.This is the main text you can access for further reading. It will be supplemented with lecture notes byPepall, L., Richards, D., & Norman, G. (2014). Industrial Organization. Contemporary Theory and Empirical Applications. 5thedition. John Wiley & Sons.
Lernmethoden
- Lecture
- Case studies
- Problem Sets
Art der Prüfung
Final grades are determined on the following basis:
- 100% final exam
Umfang
150