Microeconomics

Introduksjon

What limits or enhances the utilization of scarce resources in an economy or within an organization?  Under what conditions should we expect firms and persons who act in isolation to promote welfare for all? How can we facilitate coordination to promote the common good? Microeconomics addresses these questions emphasizing on how incentives and constraints shape decisions. This course introduces students to microeconomic decisions by and within firms. Firms might care only about their own profits, but they are constrained by available production technology, existing regulation, and competitors’ behavior. Decisions about pricing, market entry and investment cannot ignore how customers and competitors will react. Moreover, within the firm itself it is challenging to organize activities efficiently in the first place. The fundamental problem of economic organization within a firm is to coordinate and motivate employees to work in ways that are coherent and advance performance of the entire firm, not just each division or each employee alone. We study firms’ behavior under alternative types of competition, strategic interaction between agents with potentially conflicting interests, how to price products, contractual relationships between and within firms, and the economics of organization.

Kursets innhold

• Competition and efficiency
• Monopoly and price discrimination
• Game theory and oligopoly
• Vertical relations and contracts
• Contract theory: asymmetric information on hidden action or hidden characteristics
• Organizational economics and the boundaries of the firm

Forbehold

Dette er et utdrag fra den komplette kursbeskrivelsen for kurset. Dersom du er aktiv student på BI, kan du finne de komplette kursbeskrivelsene med informasjon om bl.a. læringsmål, læreprosess, pensum og eksamen på portal.bi.no. Vi tar forbehold om endringer i denne beskrivelsen.