Prospectus

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Corporate Decision Making

Course
2019-2020

NOTE: This course will be offered if the number of registered students ≥ 20.

Admission requirements

Master students

Description

Many interactions occur within and between enterprises. Sometimes the interaction is cooperative, such as when business partners successfully collaborate on a project. Other times the interaction is competitive, as exemplified by two or more firms fighting for market share. In either case, the term interdependence applies, i.e. one person’s behavior affects another person’s well-being, either positively or negatively.
Game theory is one of the outstanding intellectual advances of the last decades (with Nobel prizes in 1994, 1996, 2001, 2005, 2007, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017) because it treats strategic interactions between a small number of players in a systematic way. Nowadays seemingly diverse fields like corporate finance and organizational design are approached in a unified way by game theory. More broadly, game theory is applied widely in most social sciences (including anthropology, business, economics, law, psychology, and sociology) and biology. This course highlights game theory and applies it to many aspects of corporate decision making.

Course objectives

This course will examine the basic ideas of game theory and apply them to all fields in management. Themes and patterns are identified that are common to situations in all fields of management (accounting, finance, marketing, organization, strategy, supply chains, technology), like capacity to think ahead, grasp how others think and behave, commitments, threats and promises, contract design, strategies of signalling, and the emergence of cooperation.

In this course, we aim to achieve therefore three goals:
1 Provide insight into interactive situations, using a game theoretic perspective;
2 Improve your ability to characterize enterprise challenges by using game theory;
3 Enable you to develop better enterprise strategies.

Timetable

Preliminary schedule
Semester 1:

  • Course: November 14th – December 17th 2019

  • Exam: January 6th 2020, 14:15 – 17:15 hrs

Mode of instruction

  • 6 seminars

  • Interactive Classes

Course Load

  • 6 seminars

  • Preparation for each seminar

  • Team assignments and presentation

  • Paper

  • 3-hour final exam

Assessment method

Assignments and Examination

  • Team Assignments (40%);

  • Exam (60%)

Blackboard

Yes, students can enroll to Blackboard one month before the start of the course.

Reading list

Gibbons, R., Game Theory for Applied Economists, Princeton University Press, 1992.

Registration

Students have to register for the course in uSis. The registration in uSis will open two months before the start of the academic year. Click here for instructions.

There is limited capacity for external students. Please contact the programme coordinator.

More information on the different types of registration can be found here.

Contact

info@sbb.leidenuniv.nl