Universitat Internacional de Catalunya

Industrial Organisation

Industrial Organisation
3
14586
2
First semester
OB
Main language of instruction: Spanish

Other languages of instruction: Catalan, English,

Teaching staff


Dr. FLORES MALLO, Manuel Fernando - mflores@uic.es

Mondays 9:00-10:00 or Fridays 17:00-18:00. Important: please send an email in advance in order to confirm your meeting with the instructor (mflores@uic.es).

Introduction

Microeconomics is the study of individuals, households and firms' behavior in decision making and allocation of scarce resources. It studies how individuals/households make consumption choices, what factors influence their choices and how their decisions affect the markets of goods in terms of the prices set by firms, the supply and demand.

Understanding Microeconomic analysis is essential as it provides us with the necessary economic tools to understand and make certain business decisions, governmental economic policies that affect firms’ management and, in general, to understand the functioning of a modern economy.

Pre-course requirements

  • This course uses mathematical techniques you should be familiar with: first and second degree equations; derivatives and partial derivatives.
  • To know English language to be able to follow the lectures and understand part of the didactic material you will receive.

Objectives

The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with the analysis of business decisions and evaluating the performance of different markets and the economy as a whole.

To learn the basic microeconomic tools to study various models of economic theory. The focus of the course is designed so that students learn to think like economists in explaining events and different economic and business decisions.

 

Competences/Learning outcomes of the degree programme

  • 13 - To be familiar with and understand the terms and processes of company management.
  • 21 - To be familiar with the main theories in the fields of microeconomics and macroeconomics.
  • 22 - To be able to identify the nature and behaviour of producers, consumers and investors.
  • 23 - To be familiar with and know how to use microeconomic and macroeconomic analysis terminology.
  • 24 - To be able to carry out a financial, social and historical analysis of the environment in which a company operates.
  • 31 - To develop the ability to identify and interpret numerical data.
  • 32 - To acquire problem solving skills based on quantitative and qualitative information.
  • 50 - To acquire the ability to relate concepts, analyse and synthesise.
  • 53 - To acquire the skills necessary to learn autonomously.
  • 58 - To be able to develop self-assessment exercises.
  • 60 - To acquire knowledge that promotes respect for other cultures and habits.

Learning outcomes of the subject

 After this course you will be able to:

  • Understand how individuals and firms behave and interact in the market.
  • Understand the market structure, the perfect competition setting and deviations from it.
  • Understand strategic behaviours of firms and consumers.
  • Acquire good mathematical skills, interpret basic microeconomic graphs and curves and give economic meaning to them using the appropriate terminology.
  • Solve exercises and problems independently, acquiring a good understanding and with economic reasoning.


Syllabus

Lesson 0: Introduction

               Lesson 0.1. Preliminaries.

               Lesson 0.2. The bascics of supply and demand.

Lesson 1: Review of Economic theory of the consumer

               Lesson 1.1. Consumer budget, preferences, utility, and choice.

               Lesson 1.2. Demand.

Lesson 2: Review of Economic theory of the firm.

                Lesson 2.1. Cost minimization and Cost curves.

                Lesson 2.2. Firm supply and perfect competition.

                Lesson 2.3. Industry Supply.       

Lesson 3: Monopoly

                Lesson 3.1. Definition and characteristics.

                Lesson 3.2. Profit maximization of the monopoly.

                Lesson 3.3. Inefficiency of the monopoly.

                Lesson 3.4. Natural monopoly.

                Lesson 3.5. Price discrimination: definition and strategies.

Lesson 4: Monopolistic competition

                Lesson 4.1. Characteristics and imperfect competition.

                Lesson 4.2. Product differentiation.

Lesson 5: Oligopoly

                Lesson 5.1. Characteristics of Oligopolies: how to choose a strategy?

                Lesson 5.2. Non-cooperative oligopolies: Cournot, Stackelberg, and Bertrand models.

                Lesson 5.3 Cooperative oligopolies: Collusion.

Lesson 6: Game theory

                Lesson 6.1. Two-player game: Nash Equilibrium.

                Lesson 6.2. Simultaneous and Sequential games.

                Lesson 6.3. Strategies.

Lesson 7: Asymmetric information

Teaching and learning activities

In blended



TRAINING ACTIVITYCOMPETENCES
self-appraisal
magister class
classroom practice (solving problems/videos/text comments/essays)
individual study
solving problems at classroom
18 19 20 21 22 23 27 31 50 53 55 58

Bibliography and resources

PINDYCK, R. & RUBINFELD, D. (2009). Microeconomics. Ed. Prentice-Hall

VARIAN, H. (2009). Intermediate Microeconomics: A Modern Approach. W. W. Norton & Company

FRANK, R. (2008), Microeconomics and behavior. McGraw-Hill Irwin

SNYDER, C. & NICHOLSON, W. (2012). Microeconomic theory, Cengage Learning

Teaching and learning material


Print version