Modeling and analysis of industrial value chains

This course will provide students with insights into how economic methods and theory can be used for coordinating, managing and modeling industrial value chains. Economic instruments and incentives in relation to corporate and optimization models are considered. We also discuss how the different approaches relate to environmental and societal sustainability.

Possible topics are: supply chain management, handling of uncertainty and imperfect information, transfer prices, design and analysis of contracts, agent theory, auctions theory and institutional economics.

The position and function of the course: The course is a mandatory course in the 8th semester for students at the MTIØT program taking Managerial Economics and Operations research (AØO) as their main profile.

Knowledge and skills developed in the course: After taking this course the students should be able to apply economic theory when modeling and analyzing industrial value chains and networks. They should be able to: - explain the difference between operations research models and economic models and how they supplement each other; - model and do economic analysis in industrial value chains; - compare and understand effects of different price structures, auctions, contract types and incentives; - consider and analyze how uncertainty and information asymmetry affects decisions in value chains; - analyze decisions and prices in competitive and imperfect markets.

Lectures and mandatory exercises. The course is given in English if there are Non-Norwegian-speaking students taking the course.