FIRMS AND MARKETS (COR1-‐GB.1303.S.31.SP13)
Course Description The goal of this course is to give you some insight into how markets work. The course is structured in two parts. In the first part of the course, we study decision making by consumers and firms. We explore the fundamentals of demand and identify categories of costs that firms must consider when taking critical business decisions like pricing, exit or market entry. We study how supply and demand determines prices in efficient markets. We learn about market power and how the interplay between cost and demand fundamentals determines profit-‐maximizing decisions for firms. The second part of the course focuses on situations where, for one reason or another, markets don’t work efficiently. Here, we emphasize the importance of strategic behavior, as modeled by game theory. Strategic interactions between firms in markets can be represented as games and we learn to predict the outcomes of such games and analyze how best firms can respond to their rivals’ strategies. We discuss the basics of