BEC-31306 Organisation of the Agribusiness

Course

Credits 6.00

Language of instruction:

English

Assumed knowledge on:

Basic micro economic theory (AEP-20306 or equivalent) and basic calculus and optimization methods (MAT-14803 or equivalent).

Continuation courses:

Specialising courses BEC/INF/MCB/MST/ORL.

Contents:

This is an advanced course that is part of the Research Master Variant of the MSc programmes MME and MID. The course develops concepts relevant to industrial organization, transaction cost economics, and organization science with special emphasis on agribusiness. It is designed for MSc and PhD students with special interest in applied and quantitative research.
Subjects covered include: imperfect competition and alternative market structures; market-level efficiency and welfare consequences of market power; vertical competition and relations along the supply chain; techniques in empirical industrial organization; organizational competences; innovation; contracts and governance.

Learning outcomes:

After successful completion of this course students are expected to be able to:
- provide a critical assessment of the models used to analyse the organization of agribusiness based on their assumptions and applicability;
- recognize the differences among and the welfare consequences of alternative structures of agribusiness;
- apply the concepts and theoretical frameworks presented in class to real-world cases and to their own research.

Activities:

- lectures in which the theoretical frameworks for analysing the organization of agribusiness are presented;
- tutorials in which mathematical exercises that are based on the theoretical frameworks are solved;
- group assignment in which students will be given a case study and asked to analyse it using the theoretical frameworks presented during the lectures. Groups will return a report on the case study and present their results to the rest of the class.

Examination:

The final grade for the course consists of the following components (weights in parenthesis): written exam with open-ended questions (70%), group assignment (20%) and group presentation of the assignment's results (10%). Grades obtained from the group assignment and presentation expire at the end of the academic year for which the student is registered for the course. After that the entire grade is based only upon the written exam.

Literature:

Selected chapters from various books, scientific articles and applied case studies.