Industrial economics is important for everyone being involved in the maritime and port business. It helps for instance to understand why ship owners are merging, or why strategic alliances are becoming so important. It also helps to understand the strategic moves of the different actors in the transport sector.

The content of industrial economics changed a lot during the past years. The most dramatic changes have involved techniques. This course deals both with the latest theoretical development in theoretical modelling and a review/discussion of the most recent mainstream empirical work. Some topics that will be tackled are:

• a complete treatment of the basic oligopoly models that are widely applied in industrial economics (the Cournot model, the Bertrand model, the Hotelling spatial model of oligopoly,¿);
• strategic behaviour, including the strategic use of excess capacity, oligopoly behaviour in the presence of switching costs, as well as models of predation and limit pricing;
• models of collusion;
• the determinants of market structure and firm structure;
• vertical constraints;
• the economics of innovation.

Literature: Stephen Martin, 2002, Advanced Industrial Economics (2nd ed.), Blackwell Publishers Ltd, Oxford, 533 p., and several recent papers (list will change each year).

Dr. Frans Cruijssen