Industrial Organization

Catalog description

The purpose of this class is to link the behavior observed in actual markets with the abstract models of firms and industries that are a core part of microeconomics theory. The study of industrial organization differs from microeconomics in that it has an empirical component and focus on public policy not found in most theory courses. Industrial organization deals with many of the problems that are typically assumed away when students first learn about firms and industries, including imperfect information, product differentiation, transaction costs, ownership integration, etc. These fea- tures of the real world raise two questions: how does the structure of industry and business practices affect consumer welfare, and what poli- cies, if any, can be employed to promote market outcomes that are closer