Market Power and Efficiency: Pricing Strategies and Input Markets

How do businesses make pricing decisions when they operate outside of perfect competition? Understanding the forces that shape monopolies, oligopolies, and resource markets is essential for analyzing modern business strategy and economic policy. This course guides you through the core principles of market power, pricing strategies, and resource allocation. You will learn to evaluate how firms maximize profits under different competitive structures and how governments intervene to correct market failures and promote overall economic welfare. What you'll learn: - Analyze pricing strategies such as price discrimination and modern dynamic pricing algorithms. - Evaluate market structures including monopolies, oligopolies, and monopolistic competition. - Understand input markets, focusing on how firms make employment and resource allocation decisions. - Assess the impact of imperfect information and asymmetric information on consumer and firm behavior. - Examine the role of public policy and regulation in correcting market inefficiencies. - Explore modern digital platform economics and how network effects influence market power. The course begins with foundational definitions of market power and imperfect competition before progressing to pricing strategies, input market dynamics, and regulatory solutions. You will read through clear explanations, real-world scenarios, and practical economic models to build a strong analytical foundation. This course is designed for beginners, business professionals, and aspiring policy analysts who want to understand microeconomic principles without any prior economics background. Start exploring how modern markets function and how to analyze economic efficiency today.