Managerial Economics
Aims
The goal of this course is to make you familiar with the topics at the frontier of the field of the Economics of Organizations. This is done in a two-tier approach. First, a textbook will be used during the entire course. It serves to introduce the main topics at a Master-level. Second, some of the classic articles in the field will be studied in more detail, depending on the level of the students participating in the course.
Information
Managerial economic applies economic theory and methods to understand the existence, nature, design, and performance of organizations in general, and in specific business disciplines, such as management accounting / control, human resource management, internal organization, corporate finance, law and economics, logistics, marketing, and strategy. It helps you to recognize how economic forces affect organizations, describes the consequences of managerial behaviour, and prescribes rules for improving managerial decisions. Four themes are distinguished: incentives, authority, alignment, and cognition.
Assessment
50% assignments, 50% paper. Each lecture is preceded by a homework assignment.
Materials
|
(Classic articles in the field of Managerial Economics) Coase, R.H., The Nature of the Firm, Economica, 1937, 4, 386-405. Lazear, E, Performance Pay and Productivity, American Economic Review, 2000, 90(5), 1346-1361. Hart, O.D. and J. Moore, Property Rights and the Nature of the Firm, Journal of Political Economy, 1990, 98, 1119-1158. Aghion, P. and J. Tirole, Formal and Real Authority in Organizations, Journal of Political Economy, 1997, 105(1), 1-29. Baker, G., R. Gibbons en K.J. Murphy, Relational Contracts and the Theory of the Firm, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2002, 117(1), 39-84. Dessein, W., Authority and Communications in Organizations, Review of Economic Studies, 2002, 69, 811-838. Brynjolfsson, E. and P. Milgrom, Complementarity in Organizations, in Gibbons, R. and J. Roberts, The Handbook of Organizational Economics, Princeton University Press, 2013, 11-55. Sah, R.K. and J.E. Stiglitz, The Architecture of Economic Systems: Hierarchies and Polyarchies, American Economic Review, 1986, 76(4), 716-727. Hart, O., Reference Points and the Theory of the Firm, Economica, 2008, 75, 404-411. |
Granovetter, M., The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 2005, 19(1), 33-50.
