 |
| Detailinformationen |
| Quellcurriculum |
Masterstudium Economic and Business Analytics 2026W |
| Lernergebnisse |
Kompetenzen |
| (*)Students are able to identify the incentives relevant actors face in an organization and develop a simple game-theoretical model to structure the problem and analyze behavior. Furthermore, students can adapt the insights from standard models to understand the behavior of real-world actors.
Course Goals
The goal of this course is to offer a micro-economic approach to the internal organization of firms. It starts from the simple premise that people respond to incentives, and that they do so in predictable ways. Important questions covered in this course include how to find the right employees, how managers can design incentives to get employees to do what they want them to do, or how the structure of a firm should be designed. The course will enable students to formally analyze the trade-offs firms face when designing incentives and their organizational structure.
|
|
| Fertigkeiten |
Kenntnisse |
| (*)Learning Outcome 2 (LO2): Explain concepts such as strategy, Nash equilibrium, incentive constraints, or the role of future surplus to provide incentives today.
Learning Outcome 3 (LO3): Apply game-theoretic tools to solve simple incentive problems.
Learning Outcome 4 (LO4): Utilize the learned trade-offs to address real-world organizational issues.
|
(*)Learning Outcome 1 (LO1): Recall basic game-theoretic concepts to address incentive problems in organizations.
Content:
The classes consist of lectures, but also of exercises and student presentations. The following topics are covered:
1. Introduction to Game Theory
2. Moral Hazard: Basic Concepts (risk-incentive trade-off, limited liability, multitasking, teamwork)
3. Informal Incentives in Firms
|
|
| Beurteilungskriterien |
(*)Evaluation is based on two assesments, a student group presentation and a final exam. In each assessment, the students will be given a separate mark from 1 (best) to 5 (worst). To pass the course they need to have taken part in both assessments, obtained a minimum of 25% of the total points in the final exam, and achieved a final grade of at least 4. The final grade is then a simple average of the 2 individual assesment marks rounded in the direction of the mark obtained in the exam. For example, if a student obtains a 2 at the presentation and a 5 at the exam (yet with more than 25% of exam points), their overall grade will be a 4 (3.5 rounded up, as the exam grade is worse in this case).
Students receive individual feedback from the instructors on their presentations and group/peer feedback in class when holding the presentations. For the exam we provide both aggregate feedback to the group (what went well, what can be improvde) and, in case deemed appropriate, individual feedback on exam performance.
This combination of assessment and feedback ensures that students have a solid methodological background (LO1, LO2, LO3) assessed through their exam performance, and are able to apply it in both the academic and real-world context (LO3 and LO4) assessed through their performance in the presentation.
|
| Lehrmethoden |
(*)The course uses a combination of different teaching methods to
- maximize the motivation and attention of the students
- address the learning objectives in the didactically best way.
This includes the following:
- Teacher-centred information inputs, supported by slides and literature
- “Classroom games,” using websites where students can play games to better understand game-theoretic concepts
- Student presentations of recent research papers, including discussions about how the results relate to the concepts derived class
- Development of solutions to exercise problems
|
| Abhaltungssprache |
Englisch |
| Literatur |
(*)- Slides
- Homework exercises and solutions
- Reading material: Bolton P., and M. Dewatripont (2004), “Contract Theory,” MIT Press; Watson, J. (2013), “Strategy: An Introduction to Game Theory,” W. W. Norton & Co
- Pointers to additional literature
(All content is provided via Moodle.)
|
| Lehrinhalte wechselnd? |
Nein |
|
