This teaching unit aims at improving students' understanding about the different types of interactions at play within the firm as well as those operating between the firms in specific market structures: competitive vs. cooperative strategic interactions among economic agents, unintended interactions such as R&D spillovers or other externalities, and centralized vs. decentralized mechanisms of coordination between different activities, incentives and competences.
The teaching provides the students with a toolbox of concepts and methods to analyse firms and markets interactions (via game theory, formalization practice, readings,...) and it makes them apply this toolbox to actual issues and strategies in the current context of a fast evolving and innovative environment.

At the end of the lecture, students are able to:

• Identify and position the complementarities between firm level and market level approaches;
• Formalize firms’ strategies and interactions in a dynamic context (with a focus on inter-firm R&D cooperation);
• Understand and present the main concepts of the various theories of the firm and apply them to current issues and phenomena;
• Evaluate the impact of firms’ strategies on profits, industry performance and social welfare;
• Apply tools of game theory (Nash equilibrium, Sequential Equilibrium Concepts) to determine firms’ strategies and profits in a dynamic model.