Course Catalog

Fall 2009

B7203-001: Economics of Strategic Behavior

2010 Spr/Sum & Global 2010, Menu B

Instructor: bruce greenwald

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This course is designed to reinforce and develop student abilities to apply the concepts of industry analysis and game theory that were introduced in the core course in Business Economics (B6005). The vehicle for doing this will be predominantly case analyses since the ability to use the course concepts effectively will come largely from repeated application of those concepts.

The topics covered will be (1) the dynamics of entry and the impact of global competition, (2) the strategic imperatives of competitive markets, (3) sources of competitive advantage (local and global), (4) managing competitive interactions (cooperation and preemption), (5) bargaining situations, (6) the impact of information distribution and (7) financial implications of strategic economics. The course will consist of approximately one-third lectures and two-thirds cases. The emphasis in the course is on the ability to apply a small number of principles effectively and creatively, not the mastery of detailed aspects of the theory. For this reason the case discussion classes are particularly important.

The assigned text for the course is:  Competition Demystified (CD) by Bruce Greenwald and Judd Kahn.  The specific topics and cases are listed below, with assignment questions for the case discussions attached to this syllabus.

Bruce Greenwald

Bruce Greenwald

Robert Heilbrunn Professor of Finance and Asset Management

Professor Bruce C. N. Greenwald holds the Robert Heilbrunn Professorship of Finance and Asset Management at Columbia Business School and is the academic Director of the Heilbrunn Center for Graham & Dodd Investing. Described by the New York Times as "a guru to Wall Street's gurus," Greenwald is an authority on value investing with additional expertise in productivity and the economics of information.

Greenwald has been recognized for his outstanding teaching abilities. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award which honors the best of Columbia's teachers for maintaining the University's longstanding reputation for educational excellence. His classes are consistently oversubscribed, with more than 650 students taking his courses every year in subjects such as Value Investing, Economics of Strategic Behavior, Globalization of Markets, and Strategic Management of Media.

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