Industrial organization is concerned with the workings of markets and industries, in particular the way that firms compete with each other. The class is organized into seven topics. We will start revisiting the classic static oligopoly models that you were introduced to in Econ 100C. Subsequently, we will study static oligopoly in the case when products are not homogeneous, a topic referred to as ``product differentiation.'' In our third topic we will focus on dynamic oligopoly settings, which allow us to collusion and price wars. Market structure comes next, which is a topic where we will study, for example, what determines that some markets have many firms and others only a few. The fifth topic centers on market foreclosure, the different strategies that incumbent firms use not to let other competitors in their market. In the last two topics we will study horizontal and vertical mergers. In each case we will complement theoretical models, with a large number of applications to industries, data from experiments and a discussion of antitrust cases.

Instructor

Emanuel Vespa

Office hours: Tue 1:30-3:20pm.

Email: evespa@ucsd.edu

Teaching Assistant

Alex Garland

Office Hours: Mon 2-3pm

Email: jgarland@ucsd.edu