Theory of Industrial Structure
Lectures:
Tuesday and Thursday, 12.30 – 1.50 PM, Owen Fine Arts Center Room 1060.
Teaching Assistant: Jisub Shin
E-mail: jisubs@smu.edu
TA's Office
Hours: 1.30 – 2.30 PM, Friday, Umphrey
Lee 309
In the last few decades, Industrial Organization has been arguably one of the most active research field in economics. It began as a branch of applied micro-economics specializing in questions related to imperfect competition, effect of market structure on behavior of firms, concentration & monopoly power, cartel formation, anti-competitive practices and anti-trust issues. The revolution in the field is related to the development of non-cooperative game theory which allows economists to study strategic behavior of firms in the market. This course focuses on strategic competition between firms, how this is related to market structure and market power.
Learning Objectives:
* Familiarize students with key questions in the field of industrial
organization and regulation and their relevance.
* Introduce them to basic economic and strategic models of industrial
organization using game theoretic solution concepts such as Nash equilibrium
and subgame perfect equilibrium.
* Enable them to solve for the "equilibrium" in various models of
markets including oligopolistic markets, markets with dynamic interaction,
markets with price discrimination and markets with vertical interaction.
* Create the ability to use strategic thinking to predict market outcomes in
simple settings.