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14.271 | Fall 2013 | Graduate

# Industrial Organization I

Besides the required readings, there are also additional readings recommended for each topic. These are listed in the table below.

There are no recommended readings for Week 8.

WEEK # | TOPICS | READINGS
--- | --- | ---
1 | Monopoly Pricing and Durable Goods | Spence, A. Michael. “Monopoly, Quality, and Regulation.” Bell Journal of Economics 6, no. 2 (1975): 417–29. Bergemann, Dirk, and Juuso Välimäki. “Dynamic Pricing of New Experience Goods.” (PDF) Journal of Political Economy 114, no. 4 (2006): 713–43. Gul, Faruk, Hugo F. Sonnenschein, et al. “Foundations of Dynamic Monopoly and the Coase Conjecture.” Journal of Economic Theory 39, no. 1 (1986): 155–90. Fuchs, William, and Andrzej Skrzypacz. “Bargaining with Arrival of New Traders.” American Economic Review 100, no. 3 (2010): 802–36. Calzolari, Giacomo, and Alessandro Pavan. “Monopoly with Resale.” RAND Journal of Economics 37, no. 2 (2006): 362–75. Segal, Ilya. “Optimal Pricing Mechanisms with Unknown Demand.” American Economic Review 93, no. 3 (2003): 509–29. Chevalier, Judith A., Anil K. Kashyap, et al. “Why Don’t Prices Rise During Periods of Peak Demand? Evidence from Scanner Data.” American Economic Review 93, no. 1 (2003): 15–37. Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse M. Shapiro. “What Drives Media Slant? Evidence from U.S. Daily Newspapers.” Econometrica 78, no. 1 (2010): 35–71.
2 | Price Discrimination | Deneckere, Raymond J., and R. Preston McAfee. “Damaged Goods.” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 5, no. 2 (1996): 149–74. Maskin, Eric, and John Riley. “Monopoly with Incomplete Information.” RAND Journal of Economics 15, no. 2 (1984): 171–96. McAfee, R. Preston, John McMillan, et al. “Multiproduct Monopoly, Commodity Bundling, and Correlation of Values.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 104, no. 2 (1989): 371–83. Aguirre, Iñaki, Simon Cowan, et al. “Multiproduct Price Discrimination and Demand Curvature.” American Economic Review 100, no. 4 (2010): 1601–15. Sibley, David S., and Padmanabhan Srinagesh. “Multiproduct Nonlinear Pricing with Multiple Taste Characteristics.” RAND Journal of Economics 28, no. 4 (1997): 684–707. Rochet, Jean-Charles, and Lars Stole. “Nonlinear Pricing with Random Participation.” Review of Economic Studies 69, no. 1 (2002): 277–311. Fudenberg, Drew, and J. Miguel Villas-Boas. “Behavior-Based Price Discrimination and Customer Recognition.” Chapter 7 in Economics and Information Systems. Vol 1. Edited by Terrence Hendershott. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2006. ISBN: 9780444517715. Fudenberg, Drew, and Jean Tirole. “Upgrades, Tradeins, and Buybacks.” RAND Journal of Economics 29, no. 2 (1998): 235–58. Armstrong, Mark. “Recent Developments in the Economics of Price Discrimination.” Chapter 4 in Advances in Economics and Econometrics: Theory and Applications, Ninth World Congress. Vol. 2. Edited by Richard Blundell, Whitney K. Newey, and Torsten Persson. Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN: 9780521692090. [Preview with Google Books] Courty, Pascal, and Hao Li. “Sequential Screening.” Review of Economic Studies 67, no. 4 (2000): 697–717. Borenstein, Severin, and Nancy L. Rose. “Competition and Price Dispersion in the U.S. Airline Industry.” Journal of Political Economy 102, no. 4 (1994): 653–83. [NBER Working Paper No. 3785, 1995]. Shepard, Andrea. “Price Discrimination and Retail Configuration.” Journal of Political Economy 99, no. 1 (1991): 30–53. Graddy, Kathryn. “Testing for Imperfect Competition at the Fulton Fish Market.” RAND Journal of Economics 26, no. 1 (1995): 75–92. Leslie, Phillip. “Price Discrimination in Broadway Theater.” RAND Journal of Economics 35, no. 3 (2004): 520–41. Morton, Fiona Scott, Florian Zettelmeyer, et al. “Consumer Information and Discrimination: Does the Internet Affect the Pricing of New Cars to Women and Minorities.” Quantitative Marketing and Economics 1, no. 1 (2003): 65–92. Chu, Chenguan Sean, Phillip Leslie, et al. “Bundle-Size Pricing as an Approximation to Mixed Bundling.” American Economic Review 101, no. 1 (2011): 263–303.
3 | Static Competition and Models of Differentiation | Fisher, Franklin M. “Games Economists Play: A Noncooperative View.” RAND Journal of Economics 20, no. 1 (1989): 113–24. Perloff, Jeffrey M., and Steven C. Salop. “Equilibrium with Product Differentiation.” Review of Economic Studies 52, no. 1 (1985), 107–20. Shaked, Avner, and John Sutton. “Relaxing Price Competition Through Product Differentiation.” Review of Economic Studies 49, no. 1 (1982): 3–13. Klemperer, Paul. “The Competitiveness of Markets with Switching Costs.” RAND Journal of Economics 18, no. 1 (1987): 138–50. Klemperer, Paul D., and Margaret A. Meyer. “Supply Function Equilibria in Oligopoly Under Uncertainty.” Econometrica 57, no. 6 (1989): 1243–77. Bergemann, Dirk, and Juuso Välimäki. “Learning and Strategic Pricing."Econometrica 64, no. 5 (1996): 1125–49. Dubé, Jean-Pierre H., Günter J. Hitsch, et al. “Do Switching Costs Make Markets Less Competitive?” Journal of Marketing Research 46, no. 4 (2009): 435–45. Stole, Lars A. “Price Discrimination and Competition.” Chapter 34 in Handbook of Industrial Organization. Vol. 3. Edited by Mark Armstrong and Robert H. Porter. North Holland, 2007. ISBN: 9780444824356. [Preview with Google Books] Holmes, Thomas J. “The Effects of Third-Degree Discrimination in Oligopoly.” (PDF) American Economic Review 79, no. 1 (1989): 244–50. Corts, Kenneth S. “Third-Degree Price Discrimination in Oligopoly: All-Out Competition and Strategic Commitment.” RAND Journal of Economics 29, no. 2 (1998): 306–23. Fudenberg, Drew, and Jean Tirole. “Customer Poaching and Brand Switching.” RAND Journal of Economics 31, no. 4 (2000): 634–57. Armstrong, Mark, and John Vickers. “Competitive Nonlinear Pricing and Bundling.” Review of Economic Studies 77, no. 1 (2010): 30–60.
4 | Dynamic Competition | Rotemberg, Julio J., and Garth Saloner. “A Supergame-Theoretic Model of Price Wars during Booms.” American Economic Review 76, no. 3 (1986): 390–407. Green, Edward J., and Robert H. Porter. “Noncooperative Collusion Under Imperfect Price Information.” Econometrica 52, no. 1 (1984): 87–100. Bagwell, Kyle, and Susan Athey. “Optimal Collusion with Private Information.” RAND Journal of Economics 32, no. 3 (2001): 428–65. Harrington, Jr., Joseph E. “Cartel Price Dynamics in the Presence of an Antitrust Authority.” RAND Journal of Economics 35, no. 4 (2004): 651–73. [John Hopkins Department of Economics Working Paper No. 487, 2003]. Harrington, Joseph E., and Andrzej Skrzypacz. “Private Monitoring and Communication in Cartels: Explaining Recent Collusive Practices.” American Economic Review 101, no. 6 (2011): 2425–49. McCutcheon, Barbara. “Do Meetings in Smoke-Filled Rooms Facilitate Collusion?” Journal of Political Economy 105, no. 2 (1997): 330–50. Genesove, David, and Wallace P. Mullin. “Rules, Communication, and Collusion: Narrative Evidence from the Sugar Institute Case.” American Economic Review 91, no. 3 (2001): 379–98. [NBER Working Paper No. 8145, 2001]. Wang, Zhongmin. “(Mixed) Strategy in Oligopoly Pricing: Evidence from Gasoline Price Cycles Before and Under a Timing Regulation.” Journal of Political Economy 117, no. 6 (2009): 987–1030. Rey, Patrick, and Jean Tirole. “Cooperation vs. Collusion: How Essentiality Shapes Co-opetition.” (PDF) Working Papers, 2013.
5 | Search | Diamond, Peter A. “A Model of Price Adjustment.” Journal of Economic Theory 3, no. 2 (1971): 156–68. Varian, Hal R. “A Model of Sales.” (PDF) American Economic Review 70, no. 4 (1980): 651–9. Anderson, Simon P., and Régis Renault. “Pricing, Product Diversity, and Search Costs: A Bertrand-Chamberlin-Diamond Model.” RAND Journal of Economics 30, no. 4 (1999): 719–35. McAfee, R. Preston. “Multiproduct Equilibrium Price Dispersion.” Journal of Economic Theory 67, no. 1 (1995): 83–105. Baye, Michael R., and John Morgan. “Information Gatekeepers on the Internet and the Competitiveness of Homogeneous Product Markets.” American Economic Review 91, no. 3 (2001): 454–74. Sorensen, Alan T. “An Empirical Model of Heterogeneous Consumer Search for Retail Prescription Drugs.” NBER Working Paper No. 8548, 2001. Genesove, David. “Search at Wholesale Auto Auctions.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 1 (1995): 23–49. Hong, Han, and Matthew Shum. “Using Price Distributions to Estimate Search Costs.” RAND Journal of Economics 37, no. 2 (2006): 257–75. Ellison, Glenn, and Alexander Wolitzky. “A Search Cost Model of Obfuscation.” RAND Journal of Economics 43, no. 3 (2012): 417–41. Wilson, Chris M. “Ordered Search and Equilibrium Obfuscation.” International Journal of Industrial Organization 28, no. 5 (2010): 496–506. Ellison, Glenn, and Sara Fisher Ellison. “Match Quality, Search, and the Internet Market for Used Books.” 2013. De Los Santos, Babur, Ali Hortacsu, et al. “Testing Models of Consumer Search Using Data on Web Browsing and Purchasing Behavior.” American Economic Review 102, no. 6 (2012): 2955–80. Dinerstein, Michael, Liran Einav, et al. “Consumer Price Search and Platform Design in Internet Commerce.” (PDF) 2013.
6 | Networks and Two-Sided Markets | Farrell, Joseph, and Garth Saloner. “Standardization, Compatibility, and Innovation.” RAND Journal of Economics 16, no. 1 (1985): 70–83. Katz, Michael L., and Carl Shapiro. “Technology Adoption in the Presence of Network Externalities.” Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 4 (1986): 822–41. Fudenberg, Drew, and Jean Tirole. “Pricing Under the Threat of Entry by Sole Supplier of a Network Good.” Journal of Industrial Economics 48, no. 4 (2000): 373–90. Ellison, Glenn, and Drew Fudenberg. “The Neo-Luddite’s Lament: Excessive Upgrades in the Software Industry.” (PDF) RAND Journal of Economics 31, no. 2 (2000): 253–72. Rochet, Jean-Charles, and Jean Tirole. “Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets.” Journal of the European Economic Association 1, no. 4 (2003): 990–1029. Armstrong, Mark. “Competition in Two-Sided Markets.” RAND Journal of Economics 37, no. 3 (2006): 668–91. Ellison, Glenn, Drew Fudenberg, et al. “Competing Auctions."(PDF) Journal of the European Economic Association 2, no. 1 (2004): 30–66. Lerner, Josh, and Jean Tirole. “A Model of Forum Shopping.” American Economic Review 96, no. 4 (2006): 1091–113. Rysman, Mark. “Competition Between Networks: A Study of the Market for Yellow Pages.” Review of Economic Studies 71, no. 2 (2004): 483–512. Chandra, Ambarish, and Allan Collard-Wexler. “Mergers in Two-Sided Markets: An Application to the Canadian Newspaper Industry.” Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 18, no. 4 (2009): 1045–70. Fan, Ying. “Ownership Consolidation and Product Characteristics: A Study of the U.S. Daily Newspaper Market.” American Economic Review 103, no. 5 (2013): 1598–628. Jeziorski, Przemyslaw. “Effects of Mergers in Two-Sided Markets: Examination of U.S. Radio Industry.” University of California, Berkeley - Haas School of Business, 2012. Lee, Robin S. “Vertical Integration and Exclusivity in Platform and Two-Sided Markets.” American Economic Review 103, no. 7 (2013): 2960–3000.
7 | Entry | Sutton, John. “An Introductory Overview.” Chapter 1 in Sunk Costs and Market Structure: Price Competition, Advertising, and the Evolution of Concentration. MIT Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780262193054. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “The Analytical Framework I: Exogenous Sunk Costs.” Chapter 2 in Sunk Costs and Market Structure: Price Competition, Advertising, and the Evolution of Concentration. MIT Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780262193054. [Preview with Google Books] Jovanovic, Boyan. “Selection and the Evolution of Industry.” (PDF - 1.8MB) Econometrica 50, no. 3 (1982): 649–70. Dunne, Timothy, Mark J. Roberts, et al. “Patterns of Firm Entry and Exit in U. S. Manufacturing Industries.” (PDF) RAND Journal of Economics 19, no. 4 (1988): 495–515. Golder, Peter N., and Gerard J. Tellis. “Pioneer Advantage: Marketing Logic or Marketing Legend?” Journal of Marketing Research 30, no. 2 (1993): 158–70. Bronnenberg, Bart J., Sanjay K. Dhar, et al. “Brand History, Geography, and the Persistence of Brand Shares.” (PDF) Journal of Political Economy 117, no. 1 (2009): 87–115. Bronnenberg, Bart J., Jean-Pierre H. Dubé, et al. “The Evolution of Brand Preferences: Evidence from Consumer Migration.” American Economic Review 102, no. 6 (2012): 2472–508.
9 | Strategic Investment | Schmalensee, Richard. “Entry Deterrence in the Ready-to-eat Breakfast Cereal Industry.” Bell Journal of Economics 9, no. 2 (1978): 305–27. Judd, Kenneth L. “Credible Spatial Preemption.” RAND Journal of Economics 16, no. 2 (1985): 153–66.
10 | Predation and Limit Pricing | Ordover, Janusz A., and Garth Saloner. “Predation, Monopolization and Antitrust.” Chapter 9 in Handbook of Industrial Organization. Vol. 3. Edited by Mark Armstrong, and Robert H. Porter. North Holland, 2007. ISBN: 9780444824356. [Preview with Google Books] Milgrom, Paul, and John Roberts. “Limit Pricing and Entry Under Incomplete Information: An Equilibrium Analysis.” (PDF) Econometrica 50, no. 2 (1982): 443–60. Milgrom, Paul. “Predation, Reputation, and Entry Deterrence.” Journal of Economic Theory 27, no. 2 (1982): 280–312. Ellison, Glenn, and Susan Athey. “Dynamics of Open Source Movements.” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 3215, 2010.
11 | Auctions | Krishna, Vijay. Auction Theory. 2nd ed. Academic Press, 2009. ISBN: 9780123745071. [Preview with Google Books] McAfee, R. Preston, and John McMillan. “Auctions and Bidding.” Journal of Economic Literature 25, no. 2 (1987): 699–738. Milgrom, Paul. “Auctions and Bidding: A Primer.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 3, no. 3 (1989): 3–22. Said, Maher. “Auctions with Dynamic Populations: Efficiency and Revenue Maximization.” Journal of Economic Theory 147, no. 6 (2012): 2419–38. Gomes, Renato. “Mechanism Design in Two-Sided Markets: Auctioning Users.” (PDF) 2009. Athey, Susan, and Jonathan Levin. “Information and Competition in U.S. Forest Service Timber Auctions.” NBER Working Paper No. 7185, 1999. Cramton, Peter. “Spectrum Auction Design.” Review of Industrial Organization 42, no. 2 (2013): 161–90. Bulow, Jeremy, Jonathan Levin, et al. “Winning Play in Spectrum Auctions.” NBER Working Paper No. 14765, 2009. Eivan, Liran, Chiara Farronato, et al. “Sales Mechanisms in Online Auctions: What Happened to Internet Auctions?” (PDF) NBER Working Paper No. 19021, 2013.
12 | Bounded Rationality | Rubinstein, Ariel. “On Price Recognition and Computational Complexity in a Monopolistic Model.” Journal of Political Economy 101, no. 3 (1993): 473–84. Van Zandt, Timothy. “Real Time Decentralized Information Processing as a Model of Organizations with Boundedly Rational Agents.” Review of Economic Studies 66, no. 3 (1999): 633–58. DellaVigna, Stefano, and Ulrike Malmendier. “Paying Not to Go to the Gym.” American Economic Review 96, no. 3 (2006): 694–719. Lee, Young Han, and Ulrike Malmendier. “The Bidder’s Curse.” NBER Working Paper no. 13699, 2007. Gabaix, Xavier, and David Laibson. “Shrouded Attributes, Consumer Myopia, and Information Suppression in Competitive Markets.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 121, no. 2 (2006): 505–40. Heidhues, Paul, and Botond Koszegi. “Exploiting Naivete about Self Control in the Credit Market.” American Economic Review 100, no. 5 (2010): 2279–303. Kamenica, Emir. “Contextual Inference in Markets: On the Informational Content of Product Lines.” American Economic Review 98, no. 5 (2008): 2127–49. Spiegler, Ran. “The Market for Quacks.” Review of Economics Studies 73, no. 4 (2006): 1113-31. Sobel, Joel. “A Model of Declining Standards.” International Economic Review 41, no. 2 (2000): 295–303. Ellison, Glenn. “Evolving Standards for Academic Publishing: A q-r Theory.” Journal of Political Economy 110, no. 5 (2002): 994–1034. Baye, Michael R., and John Morgan. “Price Dispersion in the Lab and on the Internet: Theory and Evidence.” RAND Journal of Economics 35 (2004): 449–66. Eliaz, Kfir, and Ran Spiegler. “Consideration Sets and Competitive Marketing.” Review of Economic Studies 78, no. 1 (2011): 235–62. Piccione, Michele, and Ran Spiegler. “Price Competition under Limited Comparability.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 127, no. 1 (2012): 97–135. Borenstein, Severin. “To What Electricity Price Do Consumers Respond? Residential Demand Elasticity Under Increasing-Block Pricing.” (PDF - 1.1MB) 2009. Armstrong, Mark, and Yongmin Chen. “Discount Pricing.” 2012.
13 | Advertising | Butters, Gerard R. “Equilibrium Distribution of Sales and Advertising Prices.” Review of Economic Studies 44, no. 3 (1977): 465-91. Becker, Gary S., and Kevin M. Murphy. “A Simple Theory of Advertising as a Good or Bad.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 4 (1993): 941-64. Milgrom, Paul, and John Roberts. “Price and Advertising Signals of Product Quality.” Journal of Political Economy 94, no. 4 (1986): 796–821. Ackerberg, Daniel A. “Empirically Distinguishing Informative and Prestige Effects of Advertising.” RAND Journal of Economics 32, no. 2 (2001): 316–33. Lauga, Dominique Olie. “Persuasive Advertising with Sophisticated but Impressionable Consumers.” (PDF) 2010. Lewis, Randall A., Justin M. Rao, et al. “Here, There, and Everywhere: Correlated Online Behaviors Can Lead to Overestimates of the Effects of Advertising.” WWW Proceedings of the 20th international conference on World Wide Web, 2011. Abraham, Ittai, Susan Athey, et al. “Peaches, Lemons, and Cookies: Designing Auction Markets with Dispersed Information.” 2013. Athey, Susan, and Denis Nekipelov. “A Structural Model of Sponsored Search Advertising Auctions.” 2011. Bergemann, Dirk, and Alessandro Bonatti. “Selling Cookies.” (PDF) Cowles Foundation Discussion Paper no. 1920, 2013.
14 | Patents and Technology Diffusion | Bessen, James, and Eric Maskin. “Sequential Innovation, Patents, and Imitation.” RAND Journal of Economics 40, no. 4 (2009): 611–35. Green, Jerry R., and Suzanne Scotchmer. “On the Division of Profit in Sequential Innovation.” RAND Journal of Economics 26, no. 1 (1995): 20–33. Hopenhayn, Hugo A., and Matthew F. Mitchell. “Innovation Variety and Patent Breadth.” RAND Journal of Economics 32, no. 1 (2001): 152–66. Pakes, Ariel. “Patents as Options: Some Estimates of the Value of Holding European Patent Stocks.” Econometrica 54, no. 4 (1986): 755–84. Jaffe, Adam B., Manuel Trajtenberg, et al. “Geographic Localization of Knowledge Spillovers as Evidenced by Patent Citations.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 108, no. 3 (1993): 577–98. Lerner, Josh. “Where Does State Street Lead? A First Look at Finance Patents, 1971 to 2000.” Journal of Finance57, no. 2 (2002): 901–30. Rogers, Everett M., and F. Floyd Shoemaker. Communication of Innovations: A Cross-Cultural Approach. Free Press, 1971. Griliches, Zvi. “Hybrid Corn: An Exploration in the Economics of Technological Change.” Econometrica 25, no. 4 (1957): 501–22. Saloner, Garth, and Andrea Shepard. “Adoption of Technologies with Network Effects: An Empirical Examination of the Adoption of Automated Teller Machines.” RAND Journal of Economics 26, no. 3 (1995): 479–501. Lerner, Joshua, and Jean Tirole. “Efficient Patent Pools.” American Economic Review 94, no. 3 (2004): 691–711.

## Course Info

##### Instructor

- Prof. Glenn Ellison

##### Departments

- Economics

##### As Taught In

Fall 2013

##### Level

Graduate

##### Topics

- Social Science
  - Economics
    - Industrial Organization

##### Learning Resource Types

assignment Problem Sets
grading Exams
co_present Instructor Insights

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