MGT 431 – Information: Strategy and Economics

Course Page

Summary

This course serves as an introduction to the economics of information and its strategic ramifications. The main objectives are:

· to use economic theory to understand strategic interactions in the presence of uncertainty and estimate the value of information;

· to analyze competitive strategy in an information economy.

Contact Details

Instructor

Prof. Thomas A. Weber

Operations, Economics and Strategy (OES)

EPFL-CDM-ODY 3.01

Phone: +41 21 693 01 41

Fax: +41 21 693 00 20

E-Mail: thomas.weber@epfl.ch

Office Hours: Wed 17h – 18h

Teaching Assistance

Michael Mark

EPFL-CDM-ODY 4.16

Phone: +41 21 693 12 32

Office Hours: Tue 17h – 18h

Administrative Assistance

Ms. Ilona Ball

EPFL-CDM-ODY 3.16

Phone: +41 21 693 00 39

E-Mail : ilona.ball@epfl.ch

Course Materials (requires authentication)

1: Competition and Market Power

3: Pricing Methods

4: Externalities and System Effects

5: Moral Hazard and Incentives

7: Imperfect Competition: Search Markets

8: Auctions and Bargaining

9: Sharing Markets

Current Problem Sets & Solutions

· Problem Set 1 (Due: March 13) – Solutions

· Problem Set 2 (Due: April 10) – Solutions

· Problem Set 3 (Due: April 17) – Solutions

Exams & Solutions

· Midterm Exam (2019) – Solutions

· Practice Midterm Exam (2018) – Solutions

· Practice Midterm Exam (2017) – Solutions

· Practice Midterm Exam (2016) – Solutions

Useful Links & Resources

A. General Resources

· EPFL Library × information about the library and useful starting point to find electronic resources available at EPFL

· Nebis Catalogue × here you can check EPFL’s and other Swiss libraries’ holdings, and order books to the circulation desk

· Inomics × index of Economics conferences (quite comprehensive, but still incomplete)

· JSTOR × download top journal papers in Business, Economics, Statistics; most recent years not available

· Social Science Citation Index × useful to forward-search references to key papers that you identify: after searching the paper, go to its full record, click on the number next to “Times Cited”, then on the following page click on “Total”; the citation index sometimes also contains direct links to databases with pdf-copies of the papers

· Social Science Research Network × large repository of current working papers in the social sciences

B. Supply-Chain Management Resources

· BCG Strategy Institute

· CyberEconomics

· Economics of Networks

· intrade

· Investopedia

· McKinsey Quarterly

· Search Engine Watch