EDUCATIONAL TARGETS
The objective of the course is to provide students with the theoretical and technical tools needed to: understand firms’ organizational and market choices; identify and analyze the ways through which firms’ competitive strategies interact with market structures and assess such iterative process. Particular attention is paid to factors such as incomplete information, transaction costs, mechanisms used by firms to move the competitive pressure to elements other than prices; deepen the ways of public intervention in the economy to deal with market failures.
EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES
KNOWLEDGE AND ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND
At the end of the course students will possess the information and cognitive tools for:
-the assessment of the competition level as well as of the sectoral efficiency performance levels
- the assessment of the impact of firms’ behaviours on the competition level of the sector which they belong to
- evaluate the effects of firms’ strategic behaviours

INDEPENDENCE
At the end of the course students will be able to:
- identify/develop connections between microeconomic views of the behaviour of single firms and the competitive features of the sector which they belong to
- apply theoretical and applied knowledge to the identification of the main criticalities related to imperfect competition.

COMMUNICATION SKILLS
The following communication skills will be acquired by students at the end of the course:
- properly use the economic terminology
- rigorously outline and discuss the mathematical relations underlying the models studied