Postgraduate - UnitECF5040 - Industry economics

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2015 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

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6 points, SCA Band 3, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered.

Level	Postgraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Business and Economics
Organisational Unit	Department of Economics
Offered	Not offered in 2015
Coordinator(s)	Dr Mita Bhattacharya

Synopsis

The unit develops and examines the theoretical and empirical relationships between the structure of industries, the behaviour of enterprises and market performance. The fundamental principles are applied to the advanced analysis of various forms of firms' interaction: entry deterrence, collusion, product differentiation, advertising, RandD, price discrimination, vertical integration. Welfare and policy issues will be discussed with the help of applied theory and empirical approach. In this respect recent journal articles will be used to analyse the concepts.

Outcomes

The learning goals associated with this unit are to:

to promote students understanding of the industry in which firms compete
to understand strategic concepts and the use of such concepts with regard to economics, management, and organisational behaviour thereby developing an economic framework or way of thinking
to understand the question 'how do we define the firm?', and the relationship of the definition of the firm to the 'make or buy' problem
to establish an understanding of the dynamics of entry and exit in the marketplace by looking at strategies that incumbents employ to prevent entry or quicken exit by competitors
to develop a competitive advantage framework for characterising and analysing a firm's strategic position within the market.

Assessment

Within semester assessment: 55%
Examination: 45%

Workload requirements

Minimum total expected workload to achieve the learning outcomes for this unit is 144 hours per semester typically comprising a mixture of scheduled learning activities and independent study. Independent study may include associated readings, assessment and preparation for scheduled activities. The unit requires on average three/four hours of scheduled activities per week. Scheduled activities may include a combination of teacher directed learning, peer directed learning and online engagement.

Chief examiner(s)

Mita Bhattacharya

Prerequisites

ECF4100 or ECC4650 or equivalent and ECF4200 or ECC4660 or equivalent