Instructor: Robin D. Hanson, Asst. Professor, Economics (rhanson@gmu.edu, http://robinhanson.com)
Office Hours: Officially, Mon, Wed 4-5:30pm. But I'm usually in at 10b Carow Hall. Call ahead (703-993-2326) if you want to be sure.
Catalog Entry:

Econ 844 Industrial Organization and Public Policy I (3:3:0). Prerequisite: ECON 611 or permission of instructor. Structure of American industry and underlying determinants. Analysis of structure and conduct on industrial performance in light of theory and empirical evidence. Rational antitrust policy and analysis of impact on structure and performance.

Oz Shy, Industrial Organization, Theory and Applications, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-69179-5, 1996. (errata)

Carl Shapiro, Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy, Harvard Business School Press, ISBN: 087584863X, 1998.

F.M. Scherer, Industry, Structure, Strategy, and Public Policy, Harper Collins, ISBN 0-673-99289-6, 1996.

Jean Tirole, The Theory of Industrial Organization, MIT Press, ISBN 0-262-20071-6, 1994.

Dennis Carlton and Jeffrey Perloff, Modern Industrial Organization, Second Edition, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-673-46902-6, 1994.

• Class Participation Please contribute to class discussions.
• Industry Presentations You will each give a roughly 30 minute presentation to the class on the industrial organization of some industry. It is fine to base this on a chapter of the Scherer text. A signup sheet will be circulated.
• Research Paper Your paper should aim at being publishable in a mainstream economics journal, though an unusual choice of “industry” is fine. A safe strategy is to find some published paper that interests you and make some small variation on it.
• Paper Presentations You will each present a preliminary draft of your paper on either Nov. 8 or 15. I strongly encourage you to come talk to me as soon as you have an idea for a paper - I can be very useful in helping you to flesh out your idea.
• Homework Homework will be assigned weekly, typically one problem per week. ...
• Exams A midterm and a final exam will be given in class, with questions similar to the homework. Tests are closed book, but you may bring one 8.5"x11" paper of notes. One problem on the final will ask you to describe one of the industries presented in class.
• Grade Weights: Class Participate 5%, Present Industry 10%, Homework 10%, Midterm 15%, Final 25%, Present Paper 15%, Paper 20%.

Sam Peltzman, Review of The Handbook of Industrial Organization, The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 99, No. 1. (Feb., 1991), pp. 201-217.

Hal Varian, How to Build an Economic Model in your Spare Time

Tyler Cowen, Law as a public good, Economics and Philosophy, 8:249-267, 1992. See also Law as a Private Good, and Outline of a Critique of Tyler Cowen's "Law as a Public Good."

Robin Hanson, Location Discrimination in Circular City, Torus Town, and Beyond

Economics of Networks, by Nicholas Economides, 1996.

Speculative Microeconomics for Tomorrow's Economy, by J. Bradford DeLong and A. Michael Froomkin, First Monday 5(2), February 7, 2000.

Old Economy, New Rules, by J. Bradford DeLong, WorldLink Nov/Dec 1998.

Does the "New Economy" Measure up to the Great Inventions of the Past?, Robert Gordon, 2000.

Living on the Fault Line, by Geoffrey A. Moore, 2000.

New Rules for the New Economy, 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World, by Kevin Kelley, 1998. See also a related article.

The 'Free' Market: Meet The 'New' Economy, Same as the 'Old' Economy

Policy Debate: Is There a New Economy?