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Price Theory and Industrial Organization

Mini course: "Price Theory and Industrial Organization" given by Assistant Professor E. Glen Weyl, University of Chicago

There will be two lectures in the mini-course given on May 11 (1.15-4 pm) and May 12 (9.15-12), 2015 at the Stockholm School of Economics. 

The price theory approach to industrial organization summarizes rich strategic and informational interactions under imperfect competition into analytically and empirically tractable summary statistics ("prices") that determine the impact of commonly-applied policy interventions such as merger control and minimum quality standards.  Professor Weyl will discuss this approach in two lectures covering respectively the impacts of such interventions on the quantity and quality of products supplied. The first lecture covers work which extends price theory to allow a range of strategic interactions, selection and realistic cost and demand patterns. The second lecture draws on work that incorporates product quality and shows how this interacts with consumers who are heterogeneous in both their preferences and their costs and who create network consumption externalities on one another.  Topics are connected to on-going policy debates and highlight how these debates shape the questions price theory asks and thus the relevant prices it derives.

Professor Weyl’s work has rapidly had an important impact, for instance on how we think of Upward Pricing Pressure (UPP) in mergers. He is currently one leave from Chicago and working as a researcher at Microsoft Research. 

The course is open to PhD students or PhD’s in economics – subject to approval. The course is free of charge. Register with Ritva Kiviharju (nerk@hhs.se) before April 30. There will be a dinner (free!) for course participants on May 11.

There will be no exam and participation does not give any credits. The course is made possible by a grant from the Swedish Competition Authority. 

Welcome!

Richard Friberg

Stockholm School of Economics