Industrial Organisation

AY2014/2015 Semester 1

This course seeks to provide students with a consistent framework of economic analysis to understand the impact of efficient organisation on the economy. It addresses some fundamental questions in industrial organisation: how the modern firm has evolved; why some economic activities are organised within the firm and others outside; how firms interact in the marketplace; how governments react to strategic behaviour and how they regulate industries. This course is about the new industrial organisation. It goes beyond the traditional descriptive structure-conduct-performance approach and uses the latest analytical tools of microeconomics to study strategic interaction between firms. Cases in competition policy are discussed, exposing students to anti-trust law in ASEAN, Canada, the United States, Europe and Japan.