COL Karen Gutermuth
Associate Professor of Economics and Business
Industrial Organization
Office Location: 334 Scott Shipp Hall
Phone: 464-7536 Fax: 464-7005
Email: GutermuthK@vmi.edu or gutermuthk@excite.com
Web Page: IO Home Page
Optional Text: Modern Industrial Organization (any edition will do) by Carlton and Perloff
Purpose of Course: This course uses the microeconomic-based theories of transaction costs, game theory, and information theory to explain the structure of firms and markets and their interactions. The analyses will go beyond the idealized markets presented in introductory microeconomics and will take a closer look at why firms and markets have evolved into what we observe today.
Educational Goal: To give students a thorough understanding of firm behavior and performance when facing particular market structures and institutional constraints. Consider this course an "applied microeconomics" course. At the completion of this course, you should
q Realize that market structure helps determine firms’ behavior and performance
q Understand the concepts of property rights, transactions costs, and alternative ownership regimes
q Be able to analyze and predict firm behavior in competitive, monopolistic, and oligopolistic markets
q Solve mathematical optimization problems as they apply to firms’ choices of price and quantity
q Recognize the laws and sanctions applied to U.S. antitrust violations
Grade Determination: Grading is on a 10-point system and will be calculated as follows:
|
Assignments |
10% |
|
3 Tests |
60% |
|
Final Exam |
30% |
VERY IMPORTANT!!!
Dates for the exams are provided in the
Tentative Daily Schedule available through my web site. You must be available to take
these exams as scheduled. If an exam is missed, with a valid Institute excuse, either a
make-up exam will be scheduled or the weight of that exam will be moved to the final
exam. An exam missed without a valid excuse will receive a score of zero.
Please refer to the hard-copy syllabus provided the first day of class for all Work for Grade policies and other expectations.
