ECON 326 - Industrial Organization

[Spring 2017 Syllabus]

Industrial organization is one of the most common fields of applied microeconomics. It traditionally studies business firms and their relationship to the market - how they make economic decisions, how they are affected by government regulation, how they strategically interact with one another - and how these change in markets that are more or less competitive–monopoly, oligopoly, monopolistic competition, or perfect competition, often with a close connection to antitrust law.

In my view, industrial organization is less useful as a narrow theory of the classical capitalist business firm than a broader theory of economic organization in its many forms. We will examine other ways of organizing economic enterprises that deserve our attention and interest–for example, public enterprises, non-profit organizations, informal community enterprises, and criminal enterprises–as well as the institutions that govern and affect the choices involved in organizing an economic enterprise.

Industrial organization is a direct extension of basic microeconomics, so this class assumes you have met the required prerequisite courses - ECON 206 (ECON 306 recommended). My approach to I.O. does not require much math, the course will be more conceptual and discussion based around real-world examples, but there will be times where more formal analytical tools will be helpful.