D90001 - INDUSTRIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ECONOMICS

The course aims at providing students with the background and tools necessary to the analysis of imperfectly competitive markets and environmental policies in these markets. Industrial production and consumption patterns heavily rely on the intensive use of natural resources that creates concern for the environment. The need to regulate firm behaviour and ensure the sustainability of the economic system in the long run has found large consensus across scientists and policy makers. The course offers an overview for a better understanding of the determinants of firm behaviour in oligopolistic markets and in an antitrust perspective. By taking modern oligopoly theory as a benchmark, the course also deals with regulatory instruments, such as environmental taxation, and the way they interact with incentives towards collusion, horizontal and vertical mergers. It also examines firms’ incentives for green research and development (R&D) and environmental quality, as well as the role of corporate social responsibility, public firms and consumer environmental awareness as endogenous regulatory instruments. 

At the end of the class, each student will acquire the following:

Knowledge and understanding

• Knowledge of the most important models of oligopolistic markets from both a static and a dynamic viewpoint
• Knowledge of the factors which determine firms’ market power in oligopolistic markets
• Understanding how the functioning of these markets is influenced by policy issues and by firms’ strategies
• Understanding the complex relation between the environmental and economic systems
• Basic knowledge of the methods for the assessment of environmental policies and their impact on firms' strategies

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding

• Ability to assess the implications of oligopolistic competition in terms of social welfare.
• Ability to predict how the functioning of these markets is influenced by policy issues and by firms’ strategies
• Ability to interpret the motivations of environmental impacts and their consequences, using the Industrial Organization approach.
• Ability to assess costs and benefits of different environmental policies

Independent thinking

• Ability to use economic thinking to interpret the relationship between different competitive scenarios and the environment
• Ability to assess the environmental performance of firms on markets and their contribution to sustainability

Communication skills

• Ability to illustrate the hypothesis, methods and results of Industrial Economics