Industrial Organization

This course deals with interactions among market participants, particularly scrutinizing markets under incomplete competition. The course starts with a comparison of the main characteristics of different market forms such as monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, and perfect competition. Building on this knowledge, the lecture addresses topics such as price discrimination among consumers with different willingness to pay, strategic product differentiation, syndicates, vertical concentration, price-fixing and mergers. The course aims to communicate basic concepts and models of industrial organization theory, focusing on game-theoretic methods, and applying these to the decisions of market participants under strategic competition.

At the end of the module students will be able to apply basic concepts and models of industrial organization theory (particularly game-theoretic methods), and to assess competition policy measures. They are capable of evaluating or proposing courses of action for companies under strategic competition, e.g. regarding • Product Differentiation, • Price Discrimination, • Advertising and Marketing, • Market Entry and Deterrence.

Students receive credit for the course after passing an exam (written, 120 minutes). Students apply concepts and methods of competition theory (most notably of game theory) to concrete issues of strategic competition and competition policy. They show their ability to assess and evaluate strategic decisions of firms as well as regulatory measures of competition authorities and to conceive policy recommendations. Hereby, participants should demonstrate their capacity for abstraction (thinking in economic models) and concretization (interpreting and applying the results of a model). The questions can be answered in German or English language.

WI000021 "Economics I (Microeconomics)" OR WI001056 "Principles of Economics"

The module consists of a lecture as well as an exercise course. The lecture content will be conveyed to the students by means of verbal presentation. The course aims to encourage students to independently deliberate the presented economic problems, which are discussed in the lecture and in the relevant literature. In the exercise course participants apply the acquired knowledge to mutually selected examples, which partially takes place in groupwork. Moreover, concrete issues raised by students are adressed and exercises are solved.