Industrial Organization

Enseignants

Johnen Johannes;

Langue
d'enseignement

Anglais

Préalables

Un cours avancé en micro-économie
Un cours d'introduction à l'organisation industrielle
 

Thèmes abordés

Pouvoir de marché
Sources du pouvoir de marché
Stratégies de prix et segmentation de marché
Qualité de produit et information
Théorie de la politique de concurrence
Recherche et développement, propriété intellectuelle
Réseaux, standards et systèmes
Intermédiation de marché
 

Acquis
d'apprentissage

A la fin de cette unité d’enseignement, l’étudiant est capable de :
1	En termes de connaissances, les étudiants seront capables, à la fin de l'activité : (i) de comprendre pourquoi et comment les firmes en oligopole parviennent à fixer des prix d'équilibre supérieurs aux couts marginaux ; (ii) d'analyser des problèmes d'information asymétrique dans lesquels les firmes choisissent leur stratégie de marketing pour informer les consommateurs sur la qualité des produits ; (iii) d'appréender des questions de politique de concurrence (cartels, collusion, pratiques d'exclusion) ; (iv) d'analyser des questions d'actualités relatives aux marchés en réseau et aux marchés de plateformes. Sur le plan des compétences, les étudiants seront capables, à la fin de l'activité : (v) de lire et discuter des contributions récentes à la littérature (empirique et théorique) en organisation industrielle.

Contenu

The goal of the class is to introduce students to current research topics in industrial organization, to make students read and discuss research papers, and to help students develop research questions. We will start with some basic topics but will move quickly to topics in which a lot of research is going on these days, and which are highly relevant to understand our modern complex and digital economy.
I plan to cover the following topics. The focus can be adjusted based on student interests.

1. Behavioral Economics and Industrial Organization(5-6 weeks)
   • We will discuss the role of consumer mistakes and more realistic, psychology-based, models of human behavior for market performance and competition. Does competition induce firms to mitigate, or to exploit consumer mistakes? How can regulation help to mitigate exploitation of consumer mistakes? What is the role of big data and targeted pricing when consumers mispredict their own future behavior?
2. Price Discrimination and Targeted Pricing (2 weeks)
3. Platforms and Two-Sided Markets (2 weeks)
4. Consumer Search (1-2 weeks)
5. Student Presentations (1-2 weeks)

Méthodes d'enseignement

For each week, the students have to read research papers that we will discuss in class. This enables lively interaction and a critical discussion of these papers. At the end of the class, the students have to present research papers themselves, which they can choose from a reading list. Students can also propose papers to present.
We will mostly focus on papers that use theoretical models, but we will also discuss empirical work.
The goal of the class is to inspire research questions. To encourage students to develop research questions, the student will submit a research proposal in which they develop a research question, motivate why it is interesting and fills a gap in the Literature, discuss the methods they would use to approach this question, and explain expected results.

The teaching will start in the second week of the first term (Q1) in class room. Depending on the health situation, we will move to online teaching via TEAMS. 

Modes d'évaluation
des acquis des étudiants

The final grade depends on i) participation in class (10%), ii) the students’ presentation of a research paper (40%), and iii) the research proposal (50%).
The evaluation will also be based on these three elements if we have to move the course online to TEAMS.

Autres infos

The language of the class is English.
The course starts in the second week of the term.

Ressources
en ligne

Available on Moodle: https://moodleucl.uclouvain.be/

Bibliographie

A reading list will be made available at the beginning of the course.

Faculté ou entité
en charge

ECON