The objective of this course is to introduce the student to understand strategic behaviour of firms. To achieve this goal the student needs to acquire certain skills, capacities and attributes.
Alter successfully completing the course the student will be able to:
¿ Understand the working of oligopolistic markets and the decisions that firms face in these markets.
¿ Understand concepts such as market concentration and market power.
¿ Apply these concepts (above) to markets where the number of firms is small.
¿ Understand firm strategies such as price discrimination, entry deterrence or choosing a market location. For example, firms may choose a pricing strategy that exploits consumer transportation costs to increase market power.
We can classify capacities into two groups; specific and generic capacities. Under specific capacities, after successful completion of the course, the student will be able to:
¿ Obtain information on prices and market shares.
¿ Calculate concentration indices in markets.
¿ Calculate the market power of a firm.
¿ Be able to identify variables that increase market competition and similarly, variables that increase a firm¿s market power.
Under general capacities, during the course we will be working on:
¿ Develop a deeper understanding of market structure and see how the knowledge from this course can be applied to better understand certain specific problems.
¿ Acquiring tools that will enable the students to develop descriptive studies of industry.
¿ Improve the analytical capacity of the student.
¿ Improve both written and verbal skills.
Regarding student attitude after course completion; students should have:
¿ A critical understanding of market functioning and fundamentals of oligopolistic markets (mainly firm strategic behaviour). This will enable them to understand factors that influence market competition in oligopolistic markets.