The aim of the module is to give students the core models of how to think about competition and welfare. Questions that will be answered: Can discrimination improve efficiency? Why are politicians always moderate? Do patents help the efficiency of the economy? Is advertising predatory or efficient? The course will touch on many advanced university topics but is accessible to everyone. Recommended for those who have an interest in economics, both academically and socially.
We will start by looking at the measures economists use to measure competition and welfare. This will make it clear what the target and task of the subject are. The different kinds of efficiencies will be the core concepts used to discuss how different market structures fare.
The course will then turn to discuss what exactly a firm is and what it’s function is meant to be. The agency problem between an owner and a manager will be briefly touched upon to introduce core concepts in economics.
We then turn to monopoly and oligopoly and focus on computational aspects of the firm’s optimization problems. This is followed by a presentation of horizontal differentiation and an entry into the informational aspects of economics. Specifically, we will focus on different degrees of price discrimination.
Finally, the last two weeks will be about the debates around advertising and intellectual property. Advertising will touch upon the argument about information transfer vs preference formation and intellectual property will be around arguments for and against.
The covered topics are selected from various textbooks of Economics, therefore the module is foremost recommended for those wishing to study Economics as a major or minor subject.
Industrial Organisation
Module Leader:
Mavroyiannis Diomides
Status:
Confirmed
Year/Term:
2020-2021 Spring
Level:
Immersion 1
Division:
Numerical Sciences
Credit:
8