Learn about the structure of industries, the conduct of firms and their performance, in terms of profitability, innovation, growth etc.
Learn about European competition policy and its relation to IO theory

This course provides an overview of the economics of industrial organisation. It gives an introduction to the main topics in the field of industrial organisation such as collusion and cartels, concentration, entry and exit barriers, innovation and patents, franchising, vertical integration and transaction costs, mergers, competition policy and diversification. Industrial organisation studies the interrelationship between the structure of markets, the behaviour of market participants and their performances. The precise nature of this interrelationship is viewed differently by different schools and the consequences of these differences are discussed. The course is focused on the application of theoretical constructs. Applications include European Commission cases on mergers and anti-trust and the use of regression analysis in testing theory. The text book by Lipczynski et al. is the backbone of the course. The course contains a small collection of seminal articles in the field and of empirical studies in industrial organisation. The course builds on the first year courses of Microeconomics / Economics and Business and of Quantitative Methods II.

Lipczynski, J., Wilson, J., Goddard, J. (2009), Industrial Organization: Competition, Strategy, Policy, 3rd edition, Prentice Hall

An advanced level of English
Basic knowledge of microeconomics