The primary rationale for this website is to provide information on Industrial Organization: A Strategic Approach (IOSA). IOSA is intended for upper level undergraduate and MA level courses in industrial organization. Follow the link at right for access to the student website, the electronic Instructor’s Manual, and an electronic version of the first edition (pdf file).

The first edition of IOSA has a combination of features which distinguish it from other books:

(i) IOSA attempts to comprehensively and systematically present and make accessible the advances and new learning of the last twenty five years. Relative to the competitors the presentation is much more comprehensive and sophisticated without, we would argue, being inaccessible to undergraduates.

(ii) IOSA has an unmistakable and unique emphasis on antitrust, from using antitrust cases to illustrate theory to separate, up-to-date chapter-length treatments of market definition, raising rivals' costs, predatory pricing, horizontal mergers, and vertical restraints. The emphasis on antitrust makes the material relevant and interesting.

(iii) IOSA requires students to take an active role in learning. IOSA makes extensive use of game theory, providing the foundation for a “problem-solving” approach to the teaching of industrial organization. The emphasis is not only on acquiring familiarity with the state of knowledge, but on an integrated understanding of industrial organization—how to analyze and think logically about firm behavior using the conceptual tools developed. The emphasis is on the development of students’ analytical abilities, not on memorizing the state of knowledge in the field.

(iv) IOSA features extensive pedagogy including chapter-opening vignettes; key terms; integrated cases, examples, and numeric exercises; suggestions for further reading that provide detailed guides to the literature and frontier developments; and extensive end-of-chapter materials comprising summaries, problems, and discussion questions. The cases and examples are not tangential and not (typically) trivial. They have been, and will continue to be, carefully chosen to demonstrate the applicability of the theory and stimulate interest in industrial organization.

(v) An accessible development and presentation of the most important concepts. Important and/or difficult concepts are often presented in a variety of ways—analytically, numerically (worked examples), graphically and by case studies/examples. The multiplicity of the approach accommodates differing student learning styles, promotes understanding, and enables students to more easily leap from theory to practice.