An introductory course in Industrial Organization
Sources of market power
Pricing strategies and market segmentation
Product quality and information
Theory of competition policy
R&D and intellectual property
Network, standards and systems
Market intermediation
At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to : | |
| 1 | In terms of knowledge, students should be able at the end of the course to |
The contribution of this Teaching Unit to the development and command of the skills and learning outcomes of the programme(s) can be accessed at the end of this sheet, in the section entitled “Programmes/courses offering this Teaching Unit”.
I plan to cover the following topics. The focus can be adjusted based on student interests.
- Product Differentiation (2 weeks)
- Price Discrimination and Targeted Pricing (2 weeks)
- Platforms and Two-Sided Markets (2 weeks)
- Consumer Search (1-2 weeks)
- Behavioral IO aka Psychology and IO (3-4 weeks)
- We will discuss the role of consumer mistakes and more realistic, psychology-based, models of human behavior for market performance and competition. Does competition induce firms to mitigate, or to exploit consumer mistakes? How can regulation help to mitigate exploitation of consumer mistakes? What is the role of big data and targeted pricing when consumers mispredict their own future behavior?
- Switching Costs (if time permits; 1 week)
- Student Presentations (1-2 weeks)
We will mostly focus on papers that use theoretical models, but we will also discuss empirical work.
The goal of the class is to inspire research questions. To encourage students to develop research questions, the student will submit a research proposal in which they develop a research question, motivate why it is interesting and fills a gap in the Literature, discuss the methods they would use to approach this question, and explain expected results.
