Industrial Organisation

Full course description

This course introduces you to the economics of industrial organization. The field of industrial organization is concerned with how firms compete with each other in a variety of market structures and how this affects their performance, their customers and the welfare of society at large. It developed as a separate discipline in the U.S. in the 1930s and takes as its starting point that competition in the market place is often imperfect. Moreover, it takes a broad perspective on the nature of competition by considering industry rivalry along both price and non-price dimensions. Examples of the latter include product positioning, advertising and research & development.
The implied strategic firm behaviour can have far-reaching welfare consequences and gives rise to important policy questions. For instance, should the government intervene in a market that is controlled by a single (or a combination of) powerful enterprise(s)? Should certain pricing strategies be prohibited? Answers to these types of question are often far from trivial. It is then not surprising that there are different schools of thought in industrial economics; each with its own view on the workings of markets. In this course, you will learn about this variety of viewpoints and the corresponding policy recommendations.