Welcome to Topics in Empirical Industrial Organization. This course provides a broad introduction to empirical methods used in Industrial Organization (IO). We will start by discussing issues regarding firm production. We study various methods that have been used to estimate firms' production functions, and discuss empirical work studying the evolution and distribution of productivity across time and firms. Then we will turn to studying methods to estimate demand. We will discuss why IO economists study demand, and then the most commonly used model and how it is estimated.

1. Production Function Estimation and the Study of Productivity

1. The production function approach to measuring market power
2. Estimation of production function
3. IV/Panel data approach
4. Control function approach

2. Market power with homogeneous products

1. Market power and conduct with homogeneous products
2. Estimating cost parameters and conduct

3. Market power with differentiated products

1. Discrete choice models: Logit; Nested Logit: Random Coefficients logit
2. Conduct and collusion in differentiated product markets

Attendance compulsory

Lectures and tutorials

Grading will be based on a problem set and a short class presentation.

Econometrics would be desirable

Please log in with your WU account to use all functionalities of read!t. For off-campus access to our licensed electronic resources, remember to activate your VPN connection connection. In case you encounter any technical problems or have questions regarding read!t, please feel free to contact the library at readinglists@wu.ac.at.

Some basic knowledge of MATLAB would be desirable