Outline of industrial organization

Overview

• a field of economics that studies:
• * the strategic behavior of firms
• * the structure of markets
• ** Perfect competition
• ** Monopolistic competition
• ** Oligopoly
• ** Oligopsony
• ** Monopoly
• ** Monopsony
• * and the interactions between them

  Concepts

• Production theory
• * productive efficiency
• * factors of production
• * total, average, and marginal product curves
• * marginal productivity
• * isoquants & isocosts
• * the marginal rate of technical substitution
• Production function
• *inputs
• *diminishing returns to inputs
• *the stages of production
• *shifts in a production function
• Economic rent
• * classical factor rents
• * Paretian factor rents
• Production possibility frontier
• * what production levels are possible given a set of resources
• * the trade-off between various input combinations
• * the marginal rate of transformation

• Cost theory
• *Different types of costs
• **opportunity cost
• ** or historical costs
• **transaction cost
• **sunk cost
• **marginal cost
• *The isocost line
• Cost-of-production theory of value
• Long-run cost and production functions
• *long-run average cost
• *long-run production function and efficiency
• *returns to scale and isoclines
• *minimum efficient scale
• *plant capacity
• Economies of density
• *Economies of scale
• **the efficiency consequences of increasing or decreasing the level of production.
• *Economies of scope
• **the efficiency consequences of increasing or decreasing the number of different types of products produced, promoted, and distributed.
• *Network effect
• **the effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that product to other people.
• Optimum factor allocation
• *output elasticity of factor costs
• *marginal revenue product
• *marginal resource cost
• Pricing and various aspects of the pricing decision
• *Transfer pricing
• **selling within a multi-divisional company
• *Joint product pricing
• **price setting when two products are linked
• *Price discrimination
• **different prices to different buyers
• **types of price discrimination
• *Yield management
• *Price skimming
• **price discrimination over time
• *Two-part tariffs
• **charging a price composed of two parts, usually an initial fee and an ongoing fee
• *Price points
• **the effects of a non-linear demand curve on pricing
• *Cost-plus pricing
• **a markup is applied to a cost term in order to calculate price
• **cost-plus pricing with elasticity considerations
• **cost plus pricing is often used along with break even analysis
• *Rate of return pricing
• ** calculate price based on the required rate of return on investment, or rate of return on sales
• Profit maximization
• *determining the optimum price and quantity
• *the totals approach
• *marginal approach of production

  People

• Antoine Augustin Cournot
• Heinrich Freiherr von Stackelberg
• Jean Tirole
• Joseph Bertrand
• William Baumol