The course examines the causes and consequences of firms’ strategic behaviour under situations in which the assumptions of perfect competition do not hold.  The principle objective of the course is to introduce students to the basic concepts of industrial organization and help them understand how industries function, and how firms interact within an industry. In addition, the course investigates: how firms acquire market power or the ability to affect the price of their product, the strategic behaviour of firms that possess market power, the outcomes of policy interventions in these markets, and topics relating to collusions and horizontal mergers. An equally important objective of the course is to introduce students to the basic concepts of game theory and to the basic microeconomics models used to analyze firms’ strategic behavior in oligopolistic markets, so that students deveop the ability to use well-known methodological tools to analyse oligopolistic markets and predict market outcomes.

Upon successful completion of the course, the students are able to:

• understand the basic concepts and the central questions in the field of industrial organization.
• understand how firms interact in non-competitive markets.
• understand the basic concepts of game theory and the basic microeconomic models used in industrial organization.
• use basic methodological tools of microeconomics to solve for the “equilibrium” in oligopolistic markets and markets with price discrimination.

develop the ability to use strategic thinking to predict market outcomes