Classes: Mondays and Wednesdays 1-2:20 pm at Blistein
101.
Office hours: Mondays 2:20-4pm at Robinson Hall 302B.
Contents: The course covers the main (modern) theories of industrial
organization. Monopolies and oligopolies behavior: selection of price, quantity
and quality.
Grading: Grades will depend equally on paper presentations, a midterm,
a paper and a final exam.
Textbooks: The Theory of Industrial Organization by Jean Tirole,
MIT Press.
Part I: Monopoly
I.1. Prices, durability and the Coase conjecture (5 classes)
T ch. 1.
Bulow (1982). "Durable Goods Monopolists," Journal of Political
Economy, 15:314-332.
Coase (1972)."Durability and Monopoly," Journal of Law and Economics,
15:143-149.
Fudenberg and Tirole (1998). "Upgrades, Tradeins, and Buybacks,"
Rand Journal of Economics, 29:235-58.
Palacios-Huerta and Saracho, "The Provision of Incentives in Durable
Goods Firms," mimeo.
I.2. Product selection, quality and advertisement (4 classes)
T ch. 2
Milgrom and Roberts (1986). "Prices and Advertising Signals of Product
Quality," Journal of Political Economy, 94:796-821.
Klein and Leffler (1981). "The Role of Market Forces in Assuring Contractual
Performance," Journal of Political Economy, 615-641.
I.3. Price discrimination (3 or 4? classes)
T ch. 3.
Oi (1971). "A Disneyland Dilemma: Two-part Tariffs for a Mickey Mouse
Monopoly," Quarterly Journal of Economics, 85:77-90.
Maskin and Riley (1984). "Monopoly with Incomplete Information,"
Rand Journal of Economics, 15:171-96.
Midterm
Part II: Oligopoly
II.1. Price and Quantity competition (2 classes)
T ch. 5
Kreps and Scheinkman (1983). "Quantity Precommitment and Bertrand Competition
Yield Cournot Outcomes," Bell Journal of Economics, 14:326-337.
II.2. Repeated oligopoly (5 classes)
T ch. 6.
Abreu (1986). "Extremal Equilibria of Oligopolistic Supergames,"
Journal of Economic Theory, 39:191-225.
Bernheim and Whinston (1990). "Multimarket Contact and Collusive Behavior,"
Rand Journal of Economics, 21:1-26.
Green and Porter (1984), "Noncooperative Collusion Under Imperfect Price
Information," Econometrica, 52:87-100.
Rotemberg and Saloner (1986). "A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Business
Cycles and Price Wars During Booms," American Economic Review, 76:390-407.
II.3. Product differentiation (3 classes)
T ch. 7.
Hotelling (1929). "Stability in Competition," Economic Journal,
39:41-57.
Gabaix and Laibson (2003). "Some Industrial Organization with Boundedly
Rational Consumers," mimeo.
II.4. Entry and exit
T ch. 8.
Final