EconS 594, Ph.D. Industrial Organization

  1. Syllabus – EconS 594, Fall 2026.
  2. Presentations of published articles and students’ presentations Link.
  3. Slides:
    1. Chapter 3, Static imperfect competition.
      • Link to scanned chapter here.
      • Price competition with uncertain costs, Handout.
      • Strategic complementarities in oligopoly, Vives (2016). Link.
    2. Chapter 4, Dynamic imperfect competition.
    3. Chapter 5, Product differentiation.
      • Hotelling with quadratic transportation costs. Handout.
      • Vertical differentiation and natural monopoly, Handout.
    4. Chapter 6, Advertising.
      • Literature review (Handbook of Industrial Organization, Bagwell), Link.
    5. Chapter 8, Group and personalized pricing.
      • Liu and Serfes (2004). Link.
    6. Chapter 9, Menu pricing.
      • Menu pricing with two firms, summary of Ellison (2005). Link.
      • Nonlinear pricing with two firms, summary of Amstrong and Vickers (2001). Handout and Slides.
    7. Chapter 14, Cartels and tacit collusion.
      • Collusion with one-period punishment, Link.
      • Auditing collusion, leniency, and whistleblower programs, Aubert et al. (2006), Link.
      • How do cartels operate? Harrington (2006), Link.
      • Theory of collusion and competition policy. Harrington, Link.
      • Environmental Regulation as a Booster of Competition Policy, Slides.
    8. Chapter 15, Horizontal mergers.
      • Mergers between several firms. Handout.
      • Mergers with synergies. Handout.
      • Cournot competition with n asymmetric firms, and mergers. Handout.
      • Can mergers facilitate collusion? Handout.
      • Horizontal mergers and antitrust policy (Handbook of Industrial Organization, Whinston), Link.
    9. Chapter 16, Strategic incumbents and entry.
      • Strategic pre-commitment, Link.
    10. Chapter 19, Intellectual Property.
  4. Applications to Environmental Economics:
    1. Environmental Regulation using Game Theory tools. Slides.
    2. Behavioral Environmental Economics: Theory and Experiments. Slides.
    3. Eco-Labeling and Certification:
      1. Green Price Signaling, Mahenc (2008), handout.
      2. Communicating Quality, Daughety and Reinganum (2008), handout.
      3. Label Confusion, Harbaugh et al. (2011), handout.
      4. Eco-Labeling with Noisy Certification Tests, Mason (2011), handout and slides.
      5. Penetration vs. Skimming for Credence Products, Mahenc (2025), handout and slides.
      6. Bayesian Persuasion, A First Introduction to Four papers. Handout.
    4. Regulation in Mixed Oligopolies. Slides.
    5. Models about Investments in Abatement:
    6. Toy Models based on Published Papers, combined here.
  5. Econ Web Tutor in Graduate Industrial Organization (adaptive multiple choice questions to practice basic models).
  6. Practice exercises in Industrial Organization: You can find more practice exercises in my book Industrial Organization: Practice Exercises with Answer Keys, with Pak-Sing Choi and Eric Dunaway. Link.
  7. Research and presentation resources:
    • Selecting a research topic:  Laibson (Harvard) and Pischke (LSE).
    • Advise on how to write an academic paper: Glaeser (Harvard) and Cochrane (Chicago).
    • Presentations and slides: Hansen (Wisconsin-Madison) and Davis (Columbia).
    • Short book “A Guide for the Young Economist,” MIT Press, Link.